Through surveys, natural experiments, real-world social, economic, and political data, and meta-analysis, I study how diversity, inequality, and exclusion shape elections, public opinion, and political behavior in the U.S. and Canada, while also assessing interventions to reduce animus and foster inclusion amid rising societal polarization and feelings of status threat. Further, I am deeply committed to metascience, with an emphasis on replication, generalizability, and the credibility of social science research.
Embedded Files
Class, Identity, and Inequality
“Are Tax Cuts Supporters Self-Interested and/or Partisan? The Case of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” 2022. (with André Blais). American Politics Research.
Abstract:
In late 2017, the first unified Republican government in 10 years enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Why did so many citizens support a policy that primarily benefited people richer than them? The self-interest hypothesis holds that individuals act upon the position they occupy in the income distribution: richer (poorer) taxpayers should favor (oppose) regressive policy. Associations between income and policy preferences are often inconsistent, however, suggesting that many citizens fail to connect their self-interest to taxation. Indeed, political psychologists have shown compellingly that citizens can be guided by partisan considerations not necessarily aligned with their own interests. This article assesses public support for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Using data from the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study as well as contemporaneous ANES and VOTER surveys to replicate our analyses, we show that self-interest and partisanship both come into play, but that partisanship matters more. Personal financial considerations, while less influential than party identification, are relevant for two groups of individuals: Republicans and the politically unsophisticated.
“Does Diversity Undermine Support for Redistribution?” (with Marcel Roman). Working paper.
Abstract:
With rising income and wealth inequality, demand for redistribution might be expected to increase. However, public opinion on these issues has remained relatively stable in recent years. Concomitantly, the ethno-racial composition of the country has rapidly changed. Theories on ethnic diversity and racial threat predict such dynamics may reduce support for redistribution despite rising inequality, which would explain why support for redistribution remains stagnant in the U.S. We test these theories by pairing local demographic data with national public opinion surveys of nearly a million Americans, including 3 panels of individuals who were interviewed multiple times between 2010 and 2022. Changes in neighborhood demographics do not significantly influence fiscal and social policy preferences. We rule out several sources of heterogeneity, conduct various sensitivity analyses, and replicate our findings using survey experiments and perceived measures of demographic change. These null results clash with established findings on diversity, intergroup conflict, and public finance.
"Recognition Without Redistribution: Symbolic Representation amid the 'Great Awokening'." In progress.
Abstract:
Over the last two decades, Democratic voters have grown increasingly favorable toward marginalized groups. This liberalization in racial attitudes has helped increase racial diversity among the country’s elected officials. In this paper, I demonstrate these trends are primarily driven by affluent Democrats, and argue the emphasis on candidate identity may serve as a substitute for actual policy change. Using Cooperative Election Study data on candidate approval from 2008–2024, local and national election returns, and a meta-reanalysis of 50 candidate-choice conjoint experiments, I show that affluent white Democrats have become markedly more supportive of non-white candidates and are willing to trade off some ideological alignment to elect them. Minority working-class Democrats, by contrast, prioritize ideologically congruent candidates from working-class backgrounds, regardless of racial identity. Consistent with this, conditioning on constituency demographics, non-white candidates perform best in affluent districts. This suggests symbolic representation can dampen distributive conflict.
"The Limited Appeal of Social Justice Lexicon." In progress.
Abstract:
In recent years, progressive social movements have placed significant emphasis on language and messaging strategies as a means to be inclusive of, build solidarity among, and empower marginalized populations. However, this terminology has often sparked backlash not only among conservatives but also among many liberals, including the very groups it seeks to represent. Drawing on messaging experiments, election polls from 2016–2024, and textual analyses of candidate platforms, speeches, and communications, this paper shows that terms such as “Latinx” and “BIPOC” and slogans like “Abol-ish ICE” or “Defund the Police” are unpopular not only among conservatives but also among the very constituencies they aim to represent. Yet they are popular among affluent liberals. Conditioning on constituency demographics, I find that candidates who use such language receive a modest electoral boost in affluent, white, Democratic-leaning districts, but consistent penalties elsewhere. These findings show that so-called “woke” language reflects the preferences of a distinct, privileged segment of the progressive coalition and that the supply of identity politics is tailored to the tastes of this group.
"Do Affluent Americans Prioritize Cultural over Economic Issues?" In progress.
"Class and the Identity-to-Politics Link." In progress.
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
“Which Immigrants do Citizens Prefer? A Meta-Reanalysis of 100 Conjoint Experiments.” (with Taeku Lee, Mashail Malik, Reed Rasband, Marcel Roman, and Priyanka Sethy). Conditionally accepted, Science Advances. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In the last decade, an important literature in the social sciences has examined public attitudes toward immigrants in host societies. In it, a prominent experimental method—the conjoint design, where participants are tasked with rating or choosing between randomized profiles—has been used reliably to understand how immigrant characteristics shape admission preferences. We collate replication datasets from 100 individual studies spanning 1,475,403 immigrant profiles with 26 randomized attributes evaluated by 142,817 survey respondents from 36 countries. Meta-analyses reinforce well-established findings: economic, cultural, humanitarian, and procedural factors all influence evaluations. Our meta-reanalyses yield three novel insights. First, among collected studies, there are similar immigration preferences between countries and near-similar preferences within countries. Second, economic concerns have gained explanatory power over time. Third, attribute-based preferences for immigrants vary considerably depending on citizens’ underlying political beliefs. These findings shed new light on ongoing debates and point to fruitful areas for future research.
“Perceived Economic Contributions Increase Positivity toward Undocumented Immigrants.” Forthcoming, Public Opinion Quarterly. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
Undocumented immigrants contribute to the US economy by participating in the labor force, paying taxes, and starting businesses. They do so under constant fear of deportation and while being barred from government assistance programs. Nevertheless, misconceptions about how they affect the job market and public finance persist, exacerbating animus and hindering policy reforms. Across three survey experiments and three national samples of Americans, I assess two informational interventions to increase positivity toward this group: facts, which tackle misinformation, and narratives, which foster empathy. Both interventions yield positive results overall, with anecdotal accounts of "hard-working" undocumented immigrants proving most effective among those most negatively predisposed against them. The persuasive success of economic considerations in this domain has concrete implications for policymakers and advocates in their efforts to rally public support for immigration reform and against mass deportations. Further, these findings complicate motivated reasoning accounts and suggest belief updating is possible, provided information is tailored to the intended audience.
“Outgroup Bias and the Unacceptability of Tax Fraud.” 2024. (with Vincent Arel-Bundock, André Blais, Rita De La Feria, and Allison Harell). Political Studies Review. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In countries with well-developed welfare state systems, it is often claimed that racial or ethnic minorities impose a heavy burden on social assistance programs without contributing to public goods. In this study, we consider the attitudinal effects of anecdotal reports of tax cheating by minorities. We conduct survey experiments in France and the United States to assess if people react more harshly to tax fraud perpetrated by members of a minority rather than the majority group. We find no evidence that minority status affects judgments and perceptions about tax fraud, including among those on the right end of the political spectrum. Tax fraud is considered unacceptable regardless of the culprit's origin.
Abstract:
Despite extensive work on partisan-ideological sorting among the U.S. mass public, whether and how this process unfolds among immigrants remains unclear---a pressing gap as their share of the electorate continues to increase. We adjudicate between competing models of immigrant political assimilation and, building on evidence that naturalization causally increases political integration, hypothesize that gaining citizenship should motivate partisan-ideological sorting. We assemble a comprehensive corpus of 27 immigrant surveys (total N = 74,991) and conduct meta-analyses showing that sorting is more than double for naturalized immigrants (d = 0.38) relative to non-citizens (d = 0.17). We show that (1) naturalized immigrants are nearly as sorted as U.S.-born white Americans, and (2) the naturalization-sorting link is heterogeneous across ethno-racial groups. Several ancillary analyses suggest citizenship amplifies sorting in ways that are difficult to explain unless naturalization causes political incorporation. Naturalized immigrants successfully incorporate into U.S. politics and can develop partisan predispositions similar to the host society's majority national group.
“Closing the Door: Why Immigrants Become Anti-Immigrant” (with Priyanka Sethy and Mashail Malik). Working paper.
Abstract:
Are immigrants pro-immigrant? Given their own experiences and identity, we might expect immigrants to favor policies that favor other immigrants. However, recent findings challenge this assumption, particularly when it comes to naturalized immigrants who often place great importance on adherence to the same immigration rules and procedures they had to follow. This paper examines recent trends in U.S. immigrants' attitudes toward immigration focusing on significant changes that occurred during the Trump years. We leverage data from the Cooperative Election Study (2010-2023) of nearly 40,000 immigrant respondents to implement event study analyses. The results reveal that while naturalized citizens initially held more pro-immigrant stances than those with no immigration background, their views shifted dramatically during Trump’s 2016 campaign and subsequent presidency, becoming most conservative by 2018. This trend was especially pronounced in the area of unauthorized immigration, where naturalized citizens exhibited a sharper restrictionist turn than any other group. By documenting this period of political change, our findings highlight how anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy shifts may cause previously pro-immigrant groups to reposition, contributing to a growing body of research on how political environments shape immigrants' preferences over immigration policy.
“Local Diversity and Political Participation” (with Zachary Hertz). In progress.
Elections, Public Opinion,
and Political Behavior
“Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime.” 2023. (with Simon St-Georges, Vincent Arel-Bundock, and André Blais). Political Research Quarterly. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
Governments routinely offer deals to companies accused of white-collar crimes, allowing them to escape criminal charges in exchange for fines or penalties. This lets prosecutors avoid costly litigation and protects companies’ right to bid on lucrative public contracts, which can reduce the likelihood of bankruptcies or layoffs. Striking deals with white-collar criminals can be risky for governments because it could affect the perceived legitimacy of the legal system. This article explores the conditions under which the general public supports leniency agreements. Building on theoretical intuitions from the literature, we identify three characteristics that could affect mass attitudes: home bias, economic incentives, and retribution. We conduct a survey experiment in the United States and find moderate support for leniency agreements. Whether the crime occurs on US soil or abroad does not affect public opinion, and the number of jobs that would be jeopardized by criminal prosecution only has a small effect. Instead, survey respondents become much more supportive of a deal when it includes criminal charges for the corporate managers who were personally involved in the alleged wrongdoing. In the court of public opinion, punishing a handful of individuals appears to matter more than saving thousands of jobs
“Did Exposure to COVID-19 Affect Vote Choice in the 2020 Presidential Election?” 2021. (with Semra Sevi). Research & Politics. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
An important body of literature shows that citizens evaluate elected officials based on their past performance. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the conventional wisdom in both media and academic discourse was that Donald Trump would have been a two-term president absent an unprecedented, global force majeure. In this research note, we address a simple question: did exposure to COVID-19 impact vote choice in the 2020 presidential election? Using data from the Cooperative Election Study, we find that Trump’s vote share decreased because of COVID-19. However, there is no evidence suggesting that Joe Biden loses the election when no voter reports exposure to coronavirus cases and deaths. These negligible effects are found at both the national and state levels, and are robust to an exhaustive set of confounders across model specifications.
“Logarithmic versus Linear Visualizations of COVID-19 do not Affect Support for Confinement.” 2020. (with Semra Sevi, Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski, Emmanuel Heisbourg, Paola Vegas, Maxime Coulumbe, Vincent Arel-Bundock, Peter J. Loewen, and André Blais). Canadian Journal of Political Science. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
The SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and it quickly spread to many countries. By March 2020, the virus had triggered a global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020). In response to this crisis, governments have implemented unprecedented public health measures. The success of these policies will largely depend on the public's willingness to comply with new rules. A key factor in citizens’ willingness to comply is their understanding of the data that motivate government action. In this study, we examine how different ways of presenting these data visually can affect citizen's perceptions, attitudes and support for public policy.
“A Meta-Reanalysis of a Decade of Candidate Choice Conjoint Experiments” (with Alexander Coppock, Matthew Blyth, and Semra Sevi). Working paper.
Abstract:
Candidate choice conjoint experimentation has exploded since 2014 as political scientists have seized on the design as a way of understanding the many (possibly interacting) factors that influence vote choice. Each new conjoint expands the diversity of experimental subject pools and hypothetical candidate types while often unintentionally serving to replicate past conjoints, yielding a rare opportunity to evaluate the generalizability of scientific claims in political science. Thus far, we have collected, standardized, and re-analyzed 58 experiments conducted among 80,256 respondents who chose between 608,889 pairs of candidates. In our analysis, the overarching empirical lesson from conjoint experiments is that, when choosing between candidates who share similar demographic features (race, gender, age, education) versus candidates who share similar political views (partisanship, policy positions), voters overwhelmingly choose candidates who share their politics. Despite widespread concerns that the sample specificities and design idiosyncrasies impede the external validity of any particular conjoint experiment, we find strong sign generalizability across conjoint studies conducted with representative and convenience samples collected in the North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia, and Oceania.
“People not Places: Local Context does not Predict Support for Globalization” (with Stephen Ansolabehere). Working paper.
Abstract:
A wealth of research over the last decade has documented the causes and consequences of what it has termed a "globalization backlash." A recurring claim in this literature is that local exposure to globalization, as measured for instance with import penetration and foreigner influxes, has led to rising nationalism, populism, isolationism, protectionism, and xenophobia among the mass public. This paper synthesizes and re-evaluates the empirical implications of these findings. Leveraging 17 years of national surveys covering 600,000 unique respondents and 300 policy items, we estimate associations between a range of contextual indicators of globalization exposure and individual preferences over trade, immigration, international cooperation, and the military. Contrary to prevailing expectations, we observe minimal effects of contextual variables on public mood on globalization. This challenges a popular narrative and provides support for the argument that the backlash is due to issue polarization rather than public opinion swings against globalization.
Canadian Politics
“Do Incumbents Gain from Calling a Snap Election?” 2023. (with Semra Sevi and Ruth Dassonneville). Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In many countries the incumbent party is free to call an early election. This gives them an advantage over opposition parties. But this decision can also backfire. In the present paper, we examine voters’ reactions to a snap election held despite a fixed election date, resistance by opposition parties, and a global pandemic. We conduct a survey experiment during the 2021 Canadian federal election campaign to assess whether voters are influenced by information about the fixed election law and the argument that the election call was opportunistic and unnecessary. While some respondents, particularly partisans of the Liberal Party, the incumbent party, moderately respond in a negative way to new information, our treatments overall do little to influence views about the snap election. However, negative attitudes toward the election call are a decisive consideration for many voters, inflicting an electoral cost to the Liberal Party which likely deprived it from a legislative majority.
“Reassessing Local Candidate Effects.” 2022. (with Semra Sevi and André Blais). Canadian Journal of Political Science. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In a seminal article published in 2003, Blais et al. demonstrated that local candidates mattered for about 5 per cent of voters in the 2000 Canadian federal election. This study's reliance on a single election raises external validity concerns. We replicate Blais et al.'s original analyses on four elections from 2000 to 2008 using a decade's worth of data from the Canadian Election Study. The local candidate effect first uncovered by Blais et al. is not specific to a single election. Local candidates are a decisive consideration for about 5 to 8 per cent of voters outside Quebec and for about 2 to 5 per cent of voters in Quebec.
“Increasing Support for Reconciliation in Settler Colonial Societies” (with Andreea Zota and Jo-Anne Wemmers). Working paper.
Abstract:
Profound inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals persist to this day in settler colonial societies worldwide. Reconciliation processes require collective acknowledgment of past harm and reparations to redress it. However, this process may be challenged by widespread misapprehensions about, and animus toward, Indigenous populations. But what happens when citizens are confronted with information about the prevalence and extent of the ongoing consequences of settler colonialism? Leveraging the case of Canada, we argue raising awareness about structural inequalities should reduce misinformation and prejudice, ultimately helping make progress toward reconciliation. We field a national survey of 3,000 non-Indigenous Canadians to test two distinct informational interventions commonly used in the misinformation and prejudice reduction literatures: fact-checking and perspective-getting narratives. Both interventions prove successful, leading to increased recognition of inequality and support for policy reforms, reduced anti-Indigenous resentment, and higher rates of advocative behavior in the form of an anonymous note addressed to the House of Commons of Canada. Fact-checking more effectively motivates awareness and advocacy, whereas narratives boost support for actual policy change the most. Surprisingly, we observe diminishing effects of combining both interventions. These findings pave a way forward for advocates of reparations by identifying promising strategies to rally mass public support.
“Who Counts as Truly of the Nation? Subnational Identity Threat and Immigrant Inclusion in Québec.” Working paper.
Abstract:
Are Québec’s recent secularism and language laws rooted in prejudice? The question divides those who view these measures as necessary for protecting Québec’s identity and those who see discrimination. Beneath this debate lies a civic-ethnic divide: public secularism and proficiency in the common language versus ascriptive markers of ancestry and creed. This study tests these logics directly with a conjoint experiment, comparing francophone Québécois and Anglophone Canadians. Results show francophones place especially strong weight on public use of French and nativity, and penalize minority religious affiliation and visible symbols. Anglophones display the same qualitative pattern but weaker language- and nativity-linked effects. The contrast is thus one of intensity, not kind: both publics blend civic and ascriptive criteria when judging national belonging. These findings refine accounts of Québec nationalism and illuminate how populations within one country prioritize language, origin, and religion when defining who counts as a real member of the nation.
“Threatened Reactions to Indigenous Population Growth” (with Andreea Zota and Allison Harell). In progress.
Methods and Metascience
“Investigating the Analytical Robustness of the Social and Behavioural Sciences” (with Balazs Aczel, Barnabas Szaszi, Harry T. Clelland, Marton Kovacs, Hannah Schulz-Kümpel, Felix Holzmeister, Gustav Nilsonne, Sabine Hoffmann, Livia Kósa, Zoltán Torma, Brian Nosek, and 477 others). Forthcoming, Nature.
Abstract:
The same dataset can be analysed in different justifiable ways to answer the same research question, potentially challenging the robustness of empirical science. In this crowd initiative, we investigated the degree to which research findings in the social and behavioural sciences are contingent on analysts’ choices. To explore this question, we took a sample of 100 studies published between 2009 and 2018 in criminology, demography, economics and finance, management, marketing and organisational behaviour, political science, psychology, and sociology. For one claim of each study, at least five re-analysts were invited to independently re-analyze the original data. The statistical appropriateness of the re-analyses was assessed in peer evaluations and the robustness indicators were inspected along a range of research characteristics and study designs. Only 31% of the independent re-analyses yielded the same result (within a tolerance region of +/- 0.05 Cohen’s d) as the original report. Even with a four times broader tolerance region, this indicator did not go above 56%. Regarding the conclusions drawn, only 34% of the studies remained analytically robust, meaning that all re-analysts reported evidence for the originally reported claim. Using a more liberal definition of robustness produced comparable result (39% when >80% re-analysis agreement with the original conclusion defined analytical robustness). This explorative study suggests that the common single-path analyses in social and behavioural research cannot be assumed to be robust to alternative — similarly justifiable — analyses. Therefore, we recommend the development and use of practices to explore and communicate this neglected source of uncertainty.
“Quantitative Political Science Research is Greatly Underpowered.” 2025. (with Vincent Arel-Bundock, Ryan Briggs, Hristos Doucouliagos, and T.D. Stanley). Journal of Politics. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of replication success is statistical power. We assess the power of political science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000 articles. Using generous assumptions, we find that the median analysis has about 10% power and that only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to detect the consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with some being characterized by high power, but most having very low power. To contextualize our findings, we survey political methodologists to assess their expectations about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the statistical power of political science research.
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