WashU Political Science

Associate Professor of Political Science, and Director of Graduate Studies, Taylor Carlson, has received the 2026 Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior (EPOVB) Emerging Scholar award. The award is granted by the EPOVB section of the American Political Science Association. The Emerging Scholar award is presented to top scholars in the field who are within ten years of their PhD.

Learn more about the award and Carlson's work on our website: https://buff.ly/QHSM7ab

Starting off the week with some great news!

Last Friday marked the final day of the 2026 WUSTEPS program! Our 2026 cohort worked extremely hard over the last two weeks learning all about research techniques, the world of graduate school and academia, and the behind the scenes of political science PhD programs. Their final day culminated in research topic presentations and a delicious lunch with the polisci team.

Congratulations to our entire 2026 cohort! Also, thank you to all the faculty members and current PhD students -- Jaclyn Kaslovsky, Lucia Motolinia, Abbie Eastman, Carly Wayne, Taylor Carlson, Michael Strawbridge, Michael Olson, Christopher Lucas, Keith Schnakenberg, Carlo Horz, Shiran Victora Shen, Christy Qui, Ophelia Vedder, and Stephanie Shady -- who offered their insights and expertise throughout this year's program. Wishing the cohort the best of luck for the rest of the summer and into the next academic year!

To learn more about WUSTEPS, our Political Science PhD Prep Program, including how to donate to keep the program running, visit the WUSTEPS website: www.polisci.washu.edu/wusteps.

Political Science faculty, and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dan Butler, is featured in a new article in The Source from WashU Arts & Sciences.

Butler discussed his research from a working paper, titled, “The Party’s Disappointed Dropouts: Presidential Nominations and Participation in Future Primary Elections". The paper provides evidence that primary donors and voters who dislike the winning presidential primary candidate are less likely to donate and participate in future party primaries. Butler says by opting out of the primaries, people give power to the leaders of the parties to pursue agendas that are not responsive to moderate voters' preferences.

“Our research shows that people are selecting out of the primary process, which means there is little opposition to the president within the party,” Butler said. “This self-selection out of the primary process has empowered Trump. The more moderate Republicans are not showing up to vote for the Thomas Massies and John Cornyns of the party.”

Read the full article in The Source today!: https://buff.ly/EjM7GBP

Assistant Professor Victoria Shen has received the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).

The Ralph E. Powe awards are competitive research awards that provide seed money for junior faculty members to conduct research in one of five disciplines: Engineering and Applied Science, Life Sciences, Mathematics/Computer Sciences, Physical Sciences, or Policy, Management, or Education.

Read more about the award on our website: https://buff.ly/w19tgrN

politicalsciencenow.com

Professor Jacob Montgomery and his research were recently featured in an article exploring Google's shift to AI-powered search results.

The article, from Straight Arrow News, interviewed Montgomery and highlighted an article he co-authored with WashU grad student, Haofei Xu, and WashU professor of computer science & engineering, Umar Iqbal, titled, "Measuring Google AI Overviews: Activation, Source Quality, Claim Fidelity, and Publisher Impact."

"The feature could make a Google Search easier for users who no longer have to visit third-party websites for answers. But Montgomery said the convenience has come at the expense of digital content producers...'To the extent that people are being dissuaded from clicking through to those sources and instead are being presented summaries, those publishers and other websites are losing revenue from their ads,' Montgomery told Straight Arrow."

Read the full article from Straight Arrow News which includes a link to Montgomery's paper: https://buff.ly/KJCngxK

Prior to the holiday weekend, the department hosted the 4th Annual Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Conference on campus. The conference was chaired by polisci professors Taylor Carlson, Matthew Hayes, and Dino Christenson. The theme for this year's conference theme was "Democracy at the Crossroads: Challenges & Responses in the 21st Century".

The event began with a welcome reception and poster session at the Kemper Art Museum, and continued Friday at the Charles F. Knight Center with presentations and panels featuring experts and scholars from around the country. It was an enlightening and exciting two days discussing a pressing and ongoing topic effecting every citizen.

You can learn more about the presenters and the conference on the conference's website: https://buff.ly/ITVPyIp

The Department of Political Science is grateful to our sponsoring partners for their support of the conference: the Weidenbaum Center, American Political Science Association's EPOVB section, the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, the Center on the Environment, Forthright, the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity, and Verasight.

After a busy week of commencement events, we wanted to send our congrats to all of our graduates--both undergraduate and graduate--on their hard work and success. We will miss each of you in the department, and are so thrilled to watch what happens next!

Friday afternoon we held a celebration in Seigle Hall for all our graduates featuring great conversations, great joy, and great dirty sodas from Sodie Specialty Drinks! Thanks to all the students and their families who came out to toast our graduates. Have an incredible start to your summer!

Faculty members Margit Tavits, Christopher Lucas, and Jacob Montgomery and recent PhD graduates Dahjin Kim (PhD ’25) and Taishi Muraoka (PhD ’19) have published a new article in the American Journal of Political Science.

The article, “Speaking their language?: Multilingualism in party communication across democracies," takes on the Herculean task of studying the linguistic choices of more than 800 political parties from 87 democracies around the world, including the United States.

The authors analyzed 4 million Facebook posts made by political parties between 2016 and 2022 to develop the first classification of monolingual and multilingual parties around the world. The cross-national dataset provides the most comprehensive picture of parties’ multilingualism in contemporary democracies, revealing how and when political parties communicate with citizens in multiple languages.

The authors found that political ideology — specifically left-leaning ideology — was a strong predictor of multilingualism. They also found a strong link between party-level and candidate-level behavior. Candidates nominated by multilingual parties tend to mirror their parties’ strategies, posting in multiple languages.

Read more about the article at The Source: https://buff.ly/lAiNy6p