Research

I am fascinated by the processes that produce political behavior and public opinion at the individual level, and I seek to better understand how those behaviors and opinions aggregate and interact with institutions to generate the contours of the modern American political and policy environment. In other words, much of my work is focused on understanding American politics and policy from the bottom up.  

At the heart of these interests is a desire to understand the ways in which citizens interact with the political world in an era of hyper-polarization.  My research, largely based on data from more than a dozen large-N, national surveys I have designed and fielded, is focused on applying new survey experimental and measurement paradigms in four interconnected substantive areas. I am motivated to understand 1) the nature of mass-level partisan polarization in the United States, 2) the implications of partisan identity for political cognition and social interaction, 3) the ways in which party cues and brands inform thinking and detract from or enhance voter competence, and 4) the structure of policy attitudes.

As an applied methodologist, my focus is on survey methods, design-based causal inference, experimental design, and implicit measures.