Projects

POLPOP

I am currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC funded POLPOP project (PI Stefaan Walgrave) that researches how politicians evaluate public opinion, and lead the UK branch of the team. Among the research questions we are interested in are:

To what extent do politicians agree with citizens on the most persuasive arguments in favour or against particular policies?
Under what circumstances do politicians perceive that they have the ability to change public opinion?
To what extent do politicians understand citizens’ preferences regarding how democracy should be practised and how to improve levels of political trust among citizens?
How do differences in the source of communications affect politicians ’ evaluation of data about public opinion?

I have working papers on:

The accuracy of politicians' perceptions of issue salience (co-authored with Julie Sevenans, Pirmin Bundi, Fred Varone & Stefaan Walgrave)
Gendered differences in politicians' and citizens' attitudes towards inter-party political conflict (co-authored with Emma van der Goot, Pirmin Bundi, Ondrej Císař and Toni van der Meer)
The criteria that politicians generally use to evaluate the utility of public opinion signals (co-authored with Bart Maes and Stefaan Walgrave)
How politicians' class backgrounds affect their preferences towards redistribution and perceptions of wealth deservingness (co-authored with Javier Oliveira, Karolin Soontjens, Stefaan Walgrave & Maria Taflaga)

Donations made to candidates directly at election time

I recently completed a project with Mark Pack revealing that candidates at election time regularly receive more donations than they are legally able to spend. We suggest that one reason for this is that donations to candidates are not covered by the same transparency regime as donations directly to political parties, and therefore parties may encourage donations via this route. You can read a write-up of our investigation by Politico. We will be presenting evidence on our findings to relevant Parliamentary committees in the run up to the forthcoming Elections Bill.

Candidate selection in the UK

Alongside Rob Ford, I have published research showing which type of candidates are more likely to be shortlisted or to be selected in winnable Parliamentary constituencies at the 2019 and 2024 UK general elections, revealing that female and ethnic minority candidates continue to face penalties when contesting selections.

In this blog, I set out steps parties could take to work towards a gender equal Parliament by 2029.

You can access our database and replication files here.