Skip to main content

Department of Political Science

Elizabeth J. Zechmeister

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

Elizabeth J. Zechmeister is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science and Director of LAPOP Lab. She also serves as Associate Provost, in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation. Her research includes studies of voting, ideology, political parties, representation, gender, charisma, crisis, and survey methods. Zechmeister has received support from the National Science Foundation for investigations into the public opinion consequences of terrorist threat and natural disaster, respectively. She has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, among other outlets. 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 her work with LAPOP Lab, she directs the AmericasBarometer survey project. She teaches courses on Latin American politics, elections and voting, and comparative political behavior, and research design. Dr. Zechmeister received her Ph.D. from Duke University in 2003. 

Representative publications

  • Castorena, Oscar, Mollie J. Cohen, Noam Lupu, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. Forthcoming. "How Worried Should We Be? The Implications of Fabricated Survey Data for Political Science" International Journal of Public Opinion Research.  
  • 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 116(1): 249–264. 
  • Lupu, Noam, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2021. The Early COVID-19 Pandemic and Democratic Attitudes. PloS One 16(6): e0253485.
  • Cohen, Mollie J., Facundo K. Salles Kobilanski, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2018. Electoral Volatility in Latin America. Journal of Politics 80(3): 1017-1022. 
  • Carlin, Ryan E., Matthew M. Singer, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, Eds. 2015. The Latin American Voter: Pursuing Representation and Accountability in Challenging Contexts, University of Michigan Press. 
  • View Curriculum Vitae