Working Papers

Available upon request.

"Scales of Democracy? Constituency Size and Representation in the U.S. Senate." Under Review

Representation requires information: to translate public preferences into policy, elected officials must know what their constituents want. Classic political theory argues that constituency size shapes the informational environment lawmakers face and, by extension, the quality of representation they provide. I offer the first direct empirical test of this claim in the U.S. Senate, where senators hold the same formal office but represent constituencies that vary dramatically in population. My analysis combines estimates of state public opinion on 32 legislative proposals from 2010-2018 with senators' voting behavior on those proposals. Contrary to expectations, I find little evidence for the size-representation hypothesis. Senators from all state sizes appear similarly responsive to public opinion and similarly likely to side with state majorities. These findings qualify longstanding claims about political scale and democratic representation and suggest that the institutional overrepresentation of small states in the Senate is not compounded by systematically greater responsiveness.

"Country Over Party: When Social Identity Strengthens Democratic Accountability" (with Ryan Baxter-King and Moriah Harman). Under Review

Do social identities necessarily undermine democratic accountability? We argue that it depends on the identity’s structure: its object of loyalty, the outcomes that define group success, and the political actions available to express group loyalty. Partisan identity, for instance, ties citizens’ sense of self to a political team whose goal is winning and holding office. When a co-partisan incumbent performs poorly, sanctioning that incumbent weakens the party and empowers its opponents. By contrast, place-based identities – attachments to a nation, state, or city – bind citizens to political communities whose success is measured by their collective welfare. Sanctioning a poorly performing incumbent can therefore be understood as advancing the group rather than betraying it. Using American National Election Studies data, we show that partisan identity weakens sociotropic economic voting, while American national identity strengthens it. Our paper challenges the view that identity-based reasoning and accountability are inherently opposed.

"Midterm and Presidential Voters Differ Most by Age" (with Jan E. Leighley and Jonathan Nagler). Under Review

Voters in congressional midterm elections are widely viewed as demographically less representative than those in presidential elections – older, whiter, wealthier, and more educated. Using Current Population Survey data from 1994 through 2024 as well as voter file data, we compare each demographic group's share of voters with its share of the adult citizen population. The conventional wisdom is partly right but too broad. The defining difference between midterm and presidential voters is age: midterms sharply underrepresent young citizens and overrepresent older citizens. Differences by race, income, and education are much smaller. Midterm voters are, above all, older voters.

Projects in Progress

State Preemption and Local Democracy

"Federal Grants and Local State Capacity"

"LGBTQ+ Policy Feedback" (with Michael V. Elwell)