Research

Are elite cues necessary to drive the "Winner Effect" on trust in elections?

Co-authored with Cassidy Reller and Thad Kousser

Published in Electoral Studies

Abstract. A rigorous literature analyzing elections in the United States, in established European democracies, and in the newer democracies of Eastern Europe and Latin America have shown that voters on the losing side of a campaign exhibit less trust in elections and faith in democratic legitimacy.  Those who experience the “winner effect,” by contract, report greater system support and belief in the integrity of the election.  What drives this effect?  Is it the election result itself that leads to a direct change in mass opinion or is it the elite messages – including charges of voter fraud – that often follow a contest?  To disentangle the impact of mass mood from leadership cues as the mechanisms behind the winner effect, we use a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design in a recent American election in which the leading candidate on the losing side did not claim to have lost because of vote fraud.  We gathered parallel survey samples in the two days leading up to the polls closing and then the following two days once the definitive results became clear.  Even in the absence of elite claims of vote fraud, we see strong and immediate shifts in mass views.  Once the results became clear, those who supported the losing side became significantly less likely to trust that votes were counted correctly or to be satisfied with the election process, while trust and support for the process rose from pre- to post-election for voters on the winning side.  We contribute to this literature by demonstrating that elite cues are not a necessary condition to drive the winner effect; it can be generated by mass attitudinal shifts that follow from the revelation of an election result alone.  

• Measuring the Punchline: A Bradley-Terry Approach to the Partisan Humor Gap

This paper establishes an empirical framework to measure humor as a latent psychosocial trait using a Bradley-Terry model across a network of 7,500 pairwise comparisons. While partisans share a common appreciation for non-political humor, they exhibit a strong double standard toward political content, rating identical jokes as significantly funnier when the punchline mocks the opposing party rather than their own. The findings demonstrate that subjective rhetoric can be rendered empirically tractable to analyze elite communication, public opinion, and affective polarization.

• Survival of the Funniest: How Politicians Use Humor to Mitigate Scandal

Developing a formal Bayesian signaling game, this paper explains why intentional boredom is the standard equilibrium for crisis management while identifying the rare conditions where comedic deflection yields a positive resilience bonus. Testing the model on an observational dataset of 140 political scandals, the empirical findings demonstrate that post-scandal humor significantly reduces the likelihood of leaving office in disgrace. However, a pre-existing reputation for humor operates as a liability that increases electoral vulnerability, confirming that comedic framing functions as a high-stakes corrective tactic rather than a safe default persona.

• A Politician Walks into a Scandal: Brand Congruency, Scandal Severity, and Voter Backlash to Crisis Humor (working title)

Utilizing randomized survey experiments, this paper evaluates how candidate brand congruency and transgression severity dictate voter evaluations of politicians deploying crisis humor. The findings show that while traditionally serious politicians suffer acute electoral and authenticity penalties when attempting levity during high-stakes scandals, politicians with an established humorous brand successfully project resilience and buffer against demands for resignation. Levity imposes a universal tax on perceived gravitas across all candidates, yet a pre-existing comedic brand insulates public officials from the electoral backlash that devastates traditional leaders.

• Research Assistant to Margaret (Molly) Roberts, Winter 2026

  • Supported the deployment of an AI-driven event recommendation system across the university. Mapped institutional communication networks, audited departmental announcement platforms, and integrated the tool into campus-wide listservs to optimize automated data ingestion.

• Research Assistant to Pamela Ban & LaGina Gause, Winter 2024 & Winter 2025

  • Synthesized, categorized, and annotated literature on racial authoritarianism and digital technologies for Gause and Bautista-Chavez (Annual Review of Political Science, 2026)

  • Coordinated logistics and academic programming for two annual Center for American Politics research conferences, managing panel tech, travel itineraries, and recruiting external discussants from other institutions for scholarly presentations.

• Research Assistant to Thad Kousser, Summer 2021

  • Collaborated on research design, survey experimental fielding, and data analysis evaluating voter trust, elite messaging, and election administration. This work culminated in a co-authored publication in Electoral Studies.

• Research Assistant to Dan Butler, Summer 2020

  • Managed data harmonization across administrative records on state and local officials, campaign contribution files, and U.S. Census demographic data. Conducted record linkage and entity resolution to reconcile duplicate entries and surname changes among officeholders, and integrated district-level Census demographics into longitudinal panels.