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. 

Partisan polarization in the United States has intensified, fueling hostility toward partisan out-groups and eroding political and social trust. This divide has often been compared to the fervent loyalty of sports fans, where competition and ``team spirit'' dominate behaviors. Despite this comparison, research has not systematically explored how views on fairness and competitiveness in partisan competition predict support for anti-democratic policies. This paper addresses this gap by developing a novel survey battery, grounded in social identity theory, that uses sports as a conceptual proxy to measure these attitudes. We test this survey battery, and further refine it, on two U.S. samples. Using dimensional analysis we recover two latent dimensions: fairness and the competitiveness. Using a novel measure---a gerrymandering map-choice---we find that these dimensions are highly predictive of anti-democratic behavior. This study illustrates how individuals' partisanship and underlying psychology lead to undemocratic outcomes in the context of partisan competition.

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.

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.  

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.

Since the US Supreme Court overturned abortion rights with the Dobbs decision in June 2022, states have used ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion access. In 2022, four states passed measures amending their constitution to secure abortion rights and in 2024 another 10 states will vote on similar initiatives. While attention has been given to how advocacy groups organized around abortion to achieve these outcomes, we know little about how healthcare providers themselves, whose jobs and patients’ health were impacted, were mobilized post-Dobbs. How do gender and medical specialty impact physician mobilization? We measure physician mobilization in two ways: 1. Engagement in a physician-led get-out-the-vote (GOTV) drive with their patients; and 2. Turnout in the 2022 midterms. Using a novel dataset of a healthcare-based GOTV campaign and voter file data, we demonstrate that compared with 2020, the percentage of participants who specialize in women’s health increased by 50% in 2022. We utilize linear probability models to show that providers of women’s health were more likely to vote in 2022 than other types of healthcare providers. Furthermore, female providers of women’s health were more likely to vote than male providers of women’s health. Our findings have implications for mobilization research and GOTV strategies by highlighting that individuals directly impacted by policy changes are motivated to engage politically.

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.