Brief Professional Bio
Currently, I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at George Washington University. I completed my undergraduate work in Statistics and Political Science at American University. Prior to entering the political science Ph.D. program at GWU, I worked as an Actuary for GEICO.
My research focuses on political behavior, political psychology, public opinion, voting behavior, and judicial politics. I have research under review at a variety of academic journals.
My dissertation seeks to explain why individuals change their party identification. Specifically, I examine why citizens switch political parties (i.e., Democrats becoming Republicans and Republicans becoming Democrats). Wanting to understand partisan change at the micro-level, my dissertation utilizes a number of panel datasets; some cover time periods as short as one year while others span up to fifteen years. I uncover many interesting insights about the effects of ideology and issue attitudes, even when accounting for measurement error, on party switching. I show that ideology and political issue attitudes affect party switching; however, my dissertation is also a confirmation of The American Voter’s premise that party identification is largely stable – even those whose attitudes and ideology are seemingly at odds with their partisanship are always more likely to remain identified with their party than to switch parties.