Campbell Institute News

"We thought that the more worried people were about COVID, the more likely they were to be following all of the, kind of public health best practices," says Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science. "And that's not what we found. What we found was that the biggest divider in people's behaviors was not their age, not their demographics, not their education; it was their partisanship."

Professor Grant Reeher says that Trump's exaggerations of labeling Democrats as socialists and radicals are having little impact, and that, "after four years, voters are used to the hyperbole."

"We still haven't elected a woman on the national ticket in either party," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. "I think we still have a long way to go before we can talk about equality. But what we're talking about is progress."

"She was tough,” Kristi Andersen, professor emeritus of political science, says of Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress and whose most enduring victory was the passage of her Women's Armed Forces Integration Act giving women permanent roles in the U.S. military. "She held her own, for sure—as most of these people did."

"There is always higher turnout in a presidential election year, but what that will mean in any given district is less clear," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. 

"The conventions this year might actually be more important than in relatively recent years past since the campaigns are very constrained in what they can do in person," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. "Those in-person events would normally drive a lot of the media coverage in the last few months of the campaign. But that is only if people watch the conventions."

"The biggest risk" with Republicans following best public health practices and wearing masks, "is that the president will pick you out for ridicule, or if you had someone running against you, the president would endorse that person," says Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science. 

Grant Reeher, professor of political science, says that while Trump had said much worse than Biden in terms of "levels of offensiveness or levels of insensitivity or thoughtlessness," the peril for the Democrat lay in a somewhat different area. "It is less clear that Biden is saying those things on purpose." 

"Despite the historic nature of her career and vice presidential nomination, we can’t lose our capacity to remain critical of her record and uncertain about how her potential vice presidency might affect marginalized communities," writes Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science.

"If time is a political resource of value," says Elizabeth Cohen, professor political science, "then anything you can do to force people to spend their time on what you want them to do, not the work they would want to do, is effective." 

"We don’t need any more mechanisms to make whiteness more visible," says Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science.

After serving as its director or co-director since 2005, Catherine Gerard has stepped down from her leadership role at the Maxwell School’s renowned Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC), effective July 1, 2020. Gerard will continue as an adjunct professor of public administration and associate director for the Executive Education Programs at Maxwell, and also continue her work as co-director of the Collaborative Governance Initiative at PARCC. 

Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science, explains that face masks, during the COVID-19 pandemic, became politicized and that we need to prevent a similar reaction when it comes time to convince the public they should get vaccinated for a similar public health crisis. 

Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science, says she was surprised to see such enormous divides emerge as the pandemic wore on, as according to other research she’s conducted, moments of extreme anxiety and uncertainty can actually make people more open to new sources of information.

"We need to stop burning fossil fuels and we know when we need to do it," says Sarah Pralle, associate professor of political science.

"The big takeaway of all of the data is partisanship is the big determinant of all of the behavior," says Associate Professor of Political Science Shana Gadarian.

"If the public is fundamentally dissatisfied with where the country is going, that is also going to open up opportunities for different political messages—and different political messengers—to tap that dissatisfaction in different ways," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.