Todd Rapp, the president of the strategic communications firm Himle Rapp & Company and a political commenter on Minnesota Public Radio, gave a presentation titled “What, This Again? A Look at Electoral Politics in the Purple World” during assembly on Tuesday.

The purpose of the assembly was to educate St. Paul Academy and Summit School’s Upper School students on the upcoming 2012 November elections. “As citizens we owe it to our country to be educated and understanding about what is going on in the world,” co-president of SSJ Hagop Toghramadjian said. “We owe it to ourselves as well… we can still make a difference in the electoral process.”

“I’m going to talk a little bit here about my perspective on what shapes elections nationally,” Rapp said during the assembly. He started out his presentation by listing the roles of presidential elections and the challenges of both major party candidates, President Barack Obama and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, in getting votes in such a close race.

Rapp also showed the changes of which states were Republican and Democratic in the past presidential elections and the trends of Obama’s job approval ratings during his presidency. “Ten states are going to decide [the election],” Rapp said. Obama is currently ahead in nine of those ten states, but “an international incident, a mistake by the president, Mitt Romney having a great ad, all these things can potentially change these numbers,” Rapp said. “But votes are all going to come down on those ten states”

Rapp also reviewed the major events and issues discussed during this presidential race, such as the country’s trillion dollar deficit and job unemployment of the past years. “There’s really not much of a difference in the rhetoric between the two candidates,” Rapp said, “What it really comes down to is a really simple question: do you trust government more or do you trust the 1% more?” Medicare, immigration, gay marriage, and national security were listed as the four issues that could potentially influence voters who had not yet decided which candidate to support.

Rapp ended his presentation by looking forward to what factors could decide the election from now to November, and summarizing Minnesota’s current U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives race.

Students responded to the assembly positively. “I felt [the assembly] was very informative and gave a neutral stance on an issue very few people think of without bias,” junior Bilal Askari said.

Junior Vittorio Orlandi also believed that the assembly informed him on what are the main issues, and that it is important to learn about the elections even though he is too young to vote this year. “I feel like we’re going to have to vote soon and it’s tough to get educated about matters that are this important in such a short time period,” Orlandi said, “and so if you just wait until you’re legally allowed to vote, I feel that you could make some really uninformed and kind of foolish decisions.”