Description:

Please join the American Politics Workshop as they host Michael Tesler, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. 

Abstract: This book project draws on a long line of social science research to argue that voters are much more likely to switch sides over identity than issues. The book then marshals an unprecedented amount of panel survey data from the past 70 years to show that voters tend to change partisan preferences when issues rooted in strong social identities (e.g. race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender, and national attachments) become salient in presidential campaigns and partisan discourse.

Michael Tesler is a professor of political science at UC Irvine, where he teaches courses on public opinion, racial politics, elections, political psychology, American government, and quantitative research methods. He is author of Post-Racial or Most Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era (University of Chicago Press, 2016), coauthor with David O. Sears of Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America (University of Chicago Press, 2010), and coauthor with John Sides and Lynn Vavreck of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (Princeton University Press 2019). His current book projects are Identity Over Issues: When and Why Voters Switch Sides, and The Racial Politics of Pit Bulls (coauthored with Mary McThomas).

Michael’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, featured in several prominent media outlets, and published in such scholarly journals as the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics. As a former contributing editor for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog and current contributor at FiveThirtyEight, his work has received recognition from both popular and academic sources. Michael was recognized by Politico as one of the top 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016,” and received the 2018 Emerging Scholar Award for “the top scholar in the field within ten years of his or her PhD” from the Elections, Public, Opinion and Voting Behavior Section of the American Political Science Association.

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