Dot Sawler

I am a 4th year Ph.D candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester, where I am a Fellow with the W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy for the 2025-26 academic year. Broadly, my research focuses on survey methodology, and the formation of political attitudes and beliefs. My work is appears or is forthcoming in The Journal of Politics and PNAS: Nexus.

My C.V. can be found here.

Peer-Reviewed Research

Who Benefits? Experimental Evidence of Gender Differences in Aid Allocations. Funded by the Institute of Politics at FSU.  Forthcoming at The Journal of Politics. [Preprint]

Public Opinion Trends in American Society: Lessons from Social Science Infrastructure. Conditionally accepted at PNAS: Nexus. With James N. Druckman, Alice Brocheux, Pauline Gordula, Hope E. Marsh, Daniel Sun, and Yi-Fan William Zhu.

Under Review

Changing Partisan Minds, Not Hearts. [Slides] [Draft]
Winner of the 2025 Midwest Association of Public Opinion Research Doris A. Graber Award

Distrust, not Dislike. With Scott Abramson.  [Preprint] [Poster] 

How Do Women Improve Political Outcomes? Gender Differences in Information Acquisition and Political Power Usage.  With Kai Ou.

Working Papers

(Mis)Estimating Preferences with Standard Survey Items. With Scott Abramson and Thomas Chamberlin. 

Do Courts Play Fair? Property Rights, Trust, and Partisan Beliefs. With Scott Abramson.

A House Divided: Explaining Negative Intra-Party Affect. With Robert Lytle. 

Book Chapters

"Democratic Backsliding in the United States." In Jamie L. Carson and Ryan D. Williamson (Eds.), Divided Nation: Analyzing Policy, Behavior, and Institutional Challenges in Modern American Democracy (pp. 263-288). De Gruyter. With Jamie Druckman.

Teaching