Articles and Working Papers


"Sowing Distrust of the News Media as an Electoral Strategy" (with Alexander R. Podkul). In Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion, eds. Bernard Grofman, Liz Suhay, and Alex Trechsel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming. (PDF)

"Party Polarization, Ideological Sorting and the Emergence of the U.S. Partisan Gender Gap" (with Daniel Q. Gillion and Marc Meredith). Forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science (PDF)

"Distrust of the News Media as a Symptom and a Further Cause of Partisan Polarization" (with Alexander R. Podkul). In New Directions in Media and Politics, ed. Travis N. Ridout. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 54-79. 2019. (Publisher Page)

“The Spread of Inaccurate Political Information In the Era of Distrusted News Media" (with Alex Podkul). Knight Foundation white paper prepared for the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy. It is summarized in this blog post on the Commission's Medium page. March 6, 2018.

"Affective and Perceptual Polarization Among Party Activists." Working paper. A previous version was presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA. (PDF)

​"The Push and Pull of African Americans' Support for the Democratic Party" (with Daniel Q. Gillion and Marc Meredith) . Presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. (PDF)

"The Consequences of Broader Media Choice: Evidence from the Expansion of Fox News" (with Daniel J. Hopkins). Quarterly Journal of Political Science.  vol. 9, no. 1 (March 2014), pp. 115-135. (PDF)
"The Era of Media Distrust and Its Consequences for Perceptions of Political Reality." In New Directions in Media and Politics, ed. Travis N. Ridout. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 24-44. 2013. (Google Books Page)

"Investigating the Pro-Life Abortion Policy Preferences of the Millennial Generation" (with Clyde Wilcox). Paper presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.  (PDF)

"Does Anxiety Improve Voters' Decision Making?" (with Gabriel S. Lenz). Political Psychology, vol. 32, no. 2 (April 2011), pp. 347-361. (PDF)
  • Invited contribution to a three article workshop discussing our previous article, "Reassessing the Role of Anxiety in Vote Choice."

"The Role of Media Distrust in Partisan Voting." Political Behavior, vol. 32, no. 4 (December 2010), pp 567-585. (PDF)

"The Neglected Power of Elite Opinion Leadership to Produce Antipathy toward the News Media: Evidence from a Survey Experiment." Political Behavior, vol. 32, no. 1 (March 2010), pp. 29-50. (PDF)

"Exploiting a Rare Communication Shift to Document the Persuasive Power of the News Media" (with Gabriel S. Lenz). American Journal of Political Science, vol. 53, no. 2 (April 2009), pp. 394-410. (PDF)
"Reassessing the Role of Anxiety in Vote Choice" (with Gabriel S. Lenz). Political Psychology, vol. 29, no. 2 (February 2008), pp. 275-296. (PDF)

"Predispositions and Public Support for the President during the War on Terrorism." Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 4 (Winter 2007), pp. 511-538. (PDF)
“Attitudes toward the News Media and Voting Behavior.” Working Paper. June 2006. (PDF)
  • Winner of the Westview Press Award for the best paper presented by a graduate student at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.
  • Discussed on the official blog of the New York Times Editorial Board ("The Press and Polarization")
  • Material from this paper is incorporated into "The Role of Media Distrust in Partisan Voting." (Political Behavior, 2010) and the book, Why Americans Hate the Media and How it Matters.