Projects
Seeing Red: How anger increases turnout in gerrymandered districts (under review)*
In this paper I find that when a person is advantaged by suppressive district lines, they are less likely to participate and even feel enthusiastic about their advantage. For those targeted by suppressive lines, they experience heightened senses of anger and choose to turnout more. Interestingly, partisanship does not seem to matter when we consider the effects of being advantaged by institutional suppression.
Playing (Un)Fair to Win: A New Measure of Democratic Attitudes for Survey Research (With Sam Fuller) -- (under review, OSF preprint)*
This note addresses a major challenge in the study of (anti-)democratic attitudes: social desirability bias. To do this, we introduce a new measure of the psychological phenomena that underlie anti-democratic preferences. While there already exist effective approaches to avoiding social desirability bias in survey responses, they require significant costs, in both time and resources, to administer. Our measure sidesteps these issues by introducing a much shorter battery of questions related to the domain of sports. Using numerous measurement strategies, we identify two underlying dimensions from our battery: fairness preferences and the importance of winning. We relate the dimensions directly to political efficacy and political participation, finding strong substantive and statistically significant effects. To measure antidemocratic attitudes, we also leverage a novel question that places respondents in the shoes of a policymaker making decisions related to gerrymandering. Our fairness and importance of winning dimensions strongly predict responses to this hypothetical situation, with those who have low fairness preferences and high importance of winning being much more likely to choose a gerrymandered map (across multiple scenarios).
Angry White Parents: How Emotions Mobilize Participation in Local School Board Politics (With Francy Luna Diaz and Zoe Walker) (under review)*
In this project, we find that attention to teaching about white privilege in schools matters when it induces anger in respondents. We test this theory through a novel survey experiment fielded with YouGov in the spring of 2023. We find that anger is a significant conditioning factor explaining white participation in local school board politics when we cue race.
“Angry Ballots: The role of emotions in decisions to mobilize in the face of voter suppression” *
In this paper, I present a theory of emotions and political participation in undemocratic electoral institutions. Through a novel survey experiment, I find that when people learn they are being targeted by electoral suppression they participate more when they experience anger; while those who benefit from the same suppression are more likely to be enthusiastic about it and stay home. I also test this theory through a difference-in-difference design and find that the longer the line a voter waited in during the 2020 Georgia Senatorial election, the greater the likelihood of that person turning out in the follow-up runoff a month later.
Counterfactual Apportionment: The effects of malapportionment in hybrid regimes with evidence from Malaysia. (With Daniel Magleby)*
In this paper, we rely on a computer-generated algorithm to pinpoint malapportionment (gerrymandering) in Malaysia. We show how politics of excluding the ethnic-Chinese and Indian vote have led to the systematic over-weighting of ethnic-Malay votes.
Voting our Feelings: The Psychological Impacts of Electoral Suppression (Working Book Manuscript)
This project delves into the complex relationship between suppressive political institutions, emotions, and political participation. I propose a novel theory that explains the varying patterns of mobilization across different political contexts of electoral suppression. Drawing on rigorous survey experiments and quasi-experimental designs, with data from the United States and Southeast Asia, I uncover how specific emotions influence political behavior, particularly in response to whether individuals perceive themselves as winners or losers in suppressive electoral environments. This research has been supported by the NSF APSA Dissertation Improvement Grant.
Emotional Democratization: How suppression emotionally mobilizes democratization in Malaysia
In this project I test my theory of the effects undemocratic institutions and electoral behavior in Malaysia. To show how voter participation hinges on emotion and a person's respective institutional (dis)advantage, this project implements a survey experiment gauging citizen response to the effects of malapportionment, endemic in Malaysian electoral politics. I theorize that those who are advantaged (e.g. ethnic Malay and rural dwellers) will not experience anger and will be less likely to engage in activities to make elections more fair when they learn of their institutional advantage. On the other hand, those disadvantaged (e.g. urban Chinese) by the same undemocratic institution will experience anger and increase their engagement. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's Dissertation Improvement Grant and based on field interviews and a survey experiment in August of 2023.
Merdeka Square, Kuala Lumpur, July 2023
Current Large Randomized Control Trials
"Evaluating community health centers as voter registration and mobilization sites: A clustered randomized control trial". With Kelly Hunter, Michael Shepherd, Daniel Magleby, Zoe Walker, and Daniel Nielson -- Fielding Fall 2024
"Doctors as Canvassers: Leveraging the Physician-Patient Relationship in Voter Mobilization" With Maggie Jones, Kelly Hunter, Sam Fuller, and Daniel Magleby -- Fielding Fall 2024
"Evaluating governance of African microgrids: A randomized control trial in Malawi and Liberia". With Joseph Amoah, Allen Hicken, Nivedita Jhunjhunwala, Brian Min, Daniel Nielson, Megan Ryan, and Eitan Paul -- Funding Stage