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Department of Political Science

Elizabeth J. Zechmeister

Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science
Associate Provost, Office of Research and Innovation
Senior Advisor, LAPOP Lab

Elizabeth J. Zechmeister is an expert in comparative public opinion, political behavior, and international survey research. Her research includes studies of democratic attitudes, voting, ideology, representation, gender, charisma, crisis, and survey methods. She has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, among others. She is co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public and Latin American Party Systems. She is co-editor of The Latin American Voter: Pursuing Representation and Accountability in Challenging Contexts. In 2022, Zechmeister was awarded Vanderbilt’s Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research.

Zechmeister served for ten years as Director of LAPOP Lab and its award-winning AmericasBarometer survey. She also recently chaired the award-winning Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). Her work on the AmericasBarometer and CSES, as well as other research projects, has been supported by grants from USAID and the US National Science Foundation (NSF), among others. She has served as an expert on survey methods for projects by AAPOR/WAPOR, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division.

An award-winning teacher and mentor, Zechmeister offers classes on research design, elections, public opinion, and more. She also co-directs an NSF-funded summer undergraduate experience REU program. 

Representative publications

  • Cohen, Mollie J., Euiyoung Emily Noh, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2024. Vote Buying, Norms, Context, and Trust in Elections. Comparative Political Studies. doi.org/10.1177/001041402412520
  • Castorena, Oscar, Mollie J. Cohen, Noam Lupu, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2023. How Worried Should We Be? The Implications of Fabricated Survey Data for Political Science. International Journal of Public Opinion Research. doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edad007
  • Holman, Mirya, Jennifer L. Merolla, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2022. The Curious Case of Theresa May and the Public that Did Not Rally: Gendered Reactions to Terrorist Attacks can Cause Slumps Not Bumps. American Political Science Review. doi:10.1017/S0003055421000861
  • Lupu, Noam, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2021. The Early COVID-19 Pandemic and Democratic Attitudes. PloS One. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253485
  • Coan, Travis, Jennifer L. Merolla, Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, and Daniel Zizumbo-Colunga. 2020. Emotional Responses Shape the Substance of Information Seeking under Conditions of Threat. Political Research Quarterly. doi.org/10.1177/106591292094932
  • View Curriculum Vitae