Research
Publications
Strategic Considerations and Support for Direct Democracy in the United States With Daniel R. Biggers. Electoral Studies, 2023. [DOI]
Revise and Resubmit
Group Threat and Solidarity: Evidence from Yelp Reviews of Mexican Restaurants With Adam Hobbs and Loren Collingwood Revise and resubmit at Public Opinion Quarterly
Current Projects
Naturalistic Data and Political Attitudes
I am currently working on a series of projects that use naturalistic data from online platforms, particularly Yelp and Google Reviews, to capture political attitudes and behaviors as they occur organically, outside of traditional survey settings.
Group Threat and Solidarity: Evidence from Yelp Reviews of Mexican Restaurants (with Adam Hobbs and Loren Collingwood) examines how partisan and racial attitudes manifest in online reviews of Mexican restaurants, using Yelp data to capture affective polarization in everyday consumer behavior. Revise and resubmit at Public Opinion Quarterly.
BLM Protests and Online Reviews of Black-Owned Businesses (with Adam Hobbs, Deren Onursal, and Tre Garnett) investigates whether Black Lives Matter protests generate solidarity or backlash toward Black-owned businesses, using Yelp and Google Reviews data matched with protest event data from ACLED. We find that Black-owned businesses receive significantly higher ratings following nearby BLM protests, with effects that are temporally proximate and geographically local. In progress.
In the Line of Fire: Evidence of Political Shocks in Gun Retailer Online Consumer Behavior (with Stan Oklobdzija) examines how mass shootings shape consumer evaluations of gun retailers, matching geocoded mass shooting data to Yelp and Google Reviews of gun shops. Gun shops receive significantly lower ratings following nearby shootings; effects are geographically concentrated, build over the first two months before fading, and reflect changed sentiment rather than changed review volume. In progress.
Rating the Reckoning: Gender-Salience Shocks and Online Reviews of Women-Led Businesses (with Adam Hobbs) uses Google Reviews of women-led businesses to study how national gender-salience shocks shape consumer behavior. The #MeToo movement produced a slow-building increase in ratings of women-led businesses, while the polarized fight over the Kavanaugh confirmation produced a penalty, suggesting that diffuse sympathetic mobilization generates consumer solidarity while two-sided partisan conflict generates net backlash. In progress.
Housing
With Adam Hobbs, I am working on a pair of papers examining how housing markets shape attitudes toward immigration and immigrants. Housing is most households’ largest expense and largest asset, and political elites increasingly tie it to the movement of people and capital across borders; these projects ask when housing-based grievances actually translate into anti-immigrant sentiment and downstream policy preferences.
Home Sweet Home? Foreign Real Estate Investment and Redistributive Preferences (with Adam Hobbs) asks how exposure to foreign real estate investment (FREI), which moves both people and capital across borders, affects native attitudes toward redistribution. Using 2024 Cooperative Election Study data, we find that FREI attitudes, unlike racial and immigration attitudes, do not predict support for redistribution. A pre-registered survey experiment (n = 1,427) shows that FREI exposure activates nativist sentiment but does not shift redistributive preferences, except among Republicans, highlighting the political limits of nativist backlash. Under review.
Home is Where the… Immigration Attitudes Are? (with Adam Hobbs) asks whether housing affordability shapes immigration attitudes, a connection Republican elites have increasingly drawn in public debate. Combining 2024 Cooperative Election Study data with ZIP-code-level affordability measures from Zillow and the Census, we find no evidence that local housing conditions directly predict immigration attitudes. A pre-registered survey experiment (n = 1,421) shows that information explicitly linking housing costs to immigration, including an elite cue from J.D. Vance, increases anti-immigration attitudes, with policy preferences shifting most among non-partisans. In progress.
Voting Rights
Race, Party, or Both? Racially Polarized Voting After Callais (with Loren Collingwood) responds to the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which requires Section 2 Voting Rights Act plaintiffs to show that racially polarized voting cannot be explained by partisanship. Because standard ecological inference methods cannot accommodate partisan covariates, we propose OLS ecological regression with precinct-level party registration controls and first differences, applied across 35 statewide contests in California, Florida, and North Carolina (2014-2024). Hispanic and Black voter concentration continue to predict support for minority-preferred candidates after controlling for party registration, including in same-party (Democrat-vs-Democrat) general elections where partisanship cannot explain vote choice. In progress.
PASI (Programme d’accompagnement et de soutien à l’intégration)
I am also working with a novel panel dataset on recent immigrants to Quebec, collected during my postdoctoral appointment at Université Laval. This project, funded by MIFI (Quebec’s immigration government agency), surveys participants recruited through administrative data to study the impact of initial experiences on later political and social integration and political attitudes.
This is the first panel dataset on political attitudes composed exclusively of recently arrived immigrants in Canada or the US.
Buying Love? How Government Benefits Shape Immigrant Political Attachment examines how government-provided benefits shape the political attachment of recent immigrants. Under review.
Under Review
Deserving Debtors? The Determinants of Attitudes Toward Federal Student Loan Debtors
Buying Love? How Government Benefits Shape Immigrant Political Attachment
Home Sweet Home? Foreign Real Estate Investment and Redistributive Preferences With Adam Hobbs
Working Papers
Owed Gratitude? The Impact of Attempted Debt Cancelation on Attitudes and Behaviors
Debtors and Democracy: The Impact of Federal Student Loan Debt on Participation and Attitudes among Debtors
Voting and Proactive Social Norm Compliance With Daniel R. Biggers
BLM Protests and Online Reviews of Black-Owned Businesses: Evidence from Yelp and Google Reviews With Adam Hobbs, Deren Onursal, and Tre Garnett
In the Line of Fire: Evidence of Political Shocks in Gun Retailer Online Consumer Behavior With Stan Oklobdzija
Rating the Reckoning: Gender-Salience Shocks and Online Reviews of Women-Led Businesses With Adam Hobbs
Home is Where the… Immigration Attitudes Are? With Adam Hobbs
Race, Party, or Both? Racially Polarized Voting After Callais With Loren Collingwood
Dropbox Proximity and Voting Propensity With Loren Collingwood and Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien
Conference Presentations
Yelp Stars and Partisan Stripes: Evidence of Affective Polarization in Online Business Reviews With Adam Hobbs and Loren Collingwood Presented at MPSA 2026
Participating in Integration Activities and Participating in Quebec Society: A Study of Integration Programs’ Use and Impacts With Valérie-Anne Mahéo and Thomas Gareau-Paquette Presented at CPSA 2025
Housing Shocks and Redistributive Preferences With Adam Hobbs Presented at MPSA 2024 & APSA 2025
Owed Gratitude? The Impact of Attempted Debt Cancelation on Attitudes and Behaviors Presented at APSA 2024
Deserving Debtors? The Determinants of Attitudes Toward Federal Student Loan Debtors Presented at APSA 2023
Debtors and Democracy: The Impact of Federal Student Loan Debt on Participation and Attitudes among Debtors Presented at MPSA 2023
Voting and Proactive Social Norm Compliance With Daniel R. Biggers Presented at APSA 2023