I am a Democratic Innovations Postdoctoral Associate at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies working with Alan Gerber and Greg Huber. I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of California San Diego in 2023 studying elections and voters.

My research looks at why primary elections seem to follow predictable patterns despite voters knowing very little about the candidates. I argue voters who lack sophisticated information can rely on name recognition generated by campaigns and that parties provide key resources for candidates to generate effective campaigns. In other work, I look at how the decline in local news impacts primary elections showing it benefits incumbents and extreme candidates and how primary campaigns respond to the strategic incentives of primaries. I combine big data, original surveys, and causal methods to answer these questions.

My research also covers areas of representation, election policy, and causal methodologies. I have studied how to increase voter turnout using large scale field experiments, how COVID-19 impacted the 2020 US election and voters, and how COVID-19 helped to polarize the vote-by-mail debate in the United States. I am also currently studying how election officials can administer elections to increase trust in elections in the US. This work looks to provide practical and timely evidence to practitioners to improve election administration. Additionally, I have ongoing research interests in Canadian politics looking at both nomination politics and how Canada’s political institutions impact vote choice and representation.

My research has appeared or is forthcoming in, among others, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Political Analysis. It has also been quoted or discussed in Forbes, the LA Times, and the Scientific American.

You can find my CV here.