Research

Dissertation Project:

"From Handshakes to Texts: Voter Contact in the 2020 and 2022 Elections."

Abstract:

The 2020 election season marked a watershed moment, characterized by a confluence of unprecedented events including a tumultuous political landscape, racial tensions, and the challenge of conducting elections amidst a global pandemic. Trump and Biden's campaigns adopted divergent strategies to mobilize voters amid covid-19, with Trump prioritizing traditional in-person methods while Biden embraced virtual campaigning. Using data from the Cooperative Election Study (CES), I demonstrate how voter contact changed from 2020 to 2022, with increased virtual contact during 2020 while in-person contact resurged in 2022. I show how partisanship influenced the manner of contact, with Republicans predominantly targeted through in-person efforts in 2020 and Democrats virtually. Though post-covid, Democrats were more likely to be contacted in-person and virtually. These findings underscore the evolving dynamics of voter contact strategies, shedding light on the shifting landscape of political campaigning in the digital age

"Analyzing the RNC's Minority Outreach Strategy via Office Space."

Abstract:

Despite the Republican party losing the presidential race in 2020, trends emerged in the aftermath that the Democratic party’s most loyal supporters, minority voters, were shifting, at least partially, to the GOP. Shortly after, the RNC began opening semi-permanent offices targeted at engaging minority voters in strategic locations across the U.S., called community centers. Using an original dataset of the addresses of the office locations, I empirically test whether such investments into brick-and-mortar minority outreach increased voter registration among the targeted minority voting bloc in cities in Florida and California. I find mixed evidence of the effectiveness of these centers, highlighting the potential future use of this outreach strategy by parties in the future. While voter registration towards the Republican party increased in some areas, particularly areas in closer proximity to the community centers, other areas showed little to no change, raising questions about the consistency of the GOP’s approach and the variability of local dynamics. These findings suggest that while the RNC’s minority outreach efforts may have potential, their impact is contingent on a variety of factors that warrant further investigation.