Resources

A reading list for campaign practitioners, drawn from the two courses the cluster teaches at Notre Dame. It collects what political science has established about what campaigns do, how voters decide, and what works where democratic competition is contested.

Each entry links to the published article where one is available, and to a search otherwise. Some titles sit behind a paywall. The full course reading lists are in the syllabi on the teaching page.

What campaigns can and cannot do

• Aggarwal, Minali; Allen, Jennifer; Coppock, Alexander; Frankowski, Dan; Messing, Solomon; Zhang, Kelly et al. (2023). A 2 million-person, campaign-wide field experiment shows how digital advertising affects voter turnout. Nature Human Behaviour.
• Baysan, Ceren (2022). Persistent Polarizing Effects of Persuasion: Experimental Evidence from Turkey. American Economic Review.
• Broockman, David E.; Kalla, Joshua L. (2023). When and Why Are Campaigns’ Persuasive Effects Small? Evidence from the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. American Journal of Political Science.
• Chong, Dennis; Druckman, James N. (2007). Framing Theory. Annual Review of Political Science.
• Coppock, Alexander; Hill, Seth J.; Vavreck, Lynn (2020). The small effects of political advertising are small regardless of context, message, sender, or receiver: Evidence from 59 real-time randomized experiments. Science Advances.
• Dunning, Thad; Grossman, Guy; Humphreys, Macartan; Hyde, Susan D.; McIntosh, Craig; Nellis, Gareth et al. (2019). Voter information campaigns and political accountability: Cumulative findings from a preregistered meta-analysis of coordinated trials. Science Advances.
• Gerber, Alan S.; Green, Donald P. (2000). The effects of canvassing, telephone calls, and direct mail on voter turnout: A field experiment. American Political Science Review.
• Gerber, Alan S.; Green, Donald P. (2012). Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation (chapters 1 and 12). W. W. Norton.
• Golden, Miriam; Gulzar, Saad; Sonnet, Luke (2025). Political Responsiveness, Information Provision, and Capacity Gaps. Comparative Political Studies.
• Jacobson, Gary C. (2015). How Do Campaigns Matter?. Annual Review of Political Science.
• Kalla, Joshua L.; Broockman, David E. (2018). The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact in General Elections. American Political Science Review.
• López-Moctezuma, Gabriel; Wantchekon, Leonard; Rubenson, Daniel; Fujiwara, Thomas; Pe Lero, Cecilia (2022). Policy Deliberation and Voter Persuasion: Experimental Evidence from an Election in the Philippines. American Journal of Political Science.

How voters decide

• Ashworth, Scott; Fowler, Anthony (2020). Electorates versus Voters. Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy.
• Campbell, James E. (2008). Do Swing Voters Swing Elections?. In W. G. Mayer (ed.), The Swing Voter in American Politics, Brookings Institution Press.
• Dowding, Keith (2018). Rational Choice Theory and Voting. In The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion.
• Gehlbach, Scott (2013). Formal Models of Domestic Politics (chapter 1). Cambridge University Press.
• Gelman, Andrew; Goel, Sharad; Rivers, Douglas; Rothschild, David (2016). The Mythical Swing Voter. Quarterly Journal of Political Science.
• Healy, Andrew; Malhotra, Neil (2013). Retrospective Voting Reconsidered. Annual Review of Political Science.
• Hutchings, Vincent; Jefferson, Hakeem J. (2018). The Sociological and Social-Psychological Approaches. In The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion.
• Mayer, William G. (2008). What Exactly Is a Swing Voter? Definition and Measurement. In W. G. Mayer (ed.), The Swing Voter in American Politics, Brookings Institution Press.
• Peters, B. Guy (2018). Institutions and Voting Behavior. In The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion.
• Shino, Enrijeta; McKee, Seth C.; Smith, Daniel A. (2024). The fall of Trump: mobilization and vote switching in the 2020 presidential election. Political Science Research and Methods.
• Smidt, Corwin D. (2017). Polarization and the Decline of the American Floating Voter. American Journal of Political Science.
• Weghorst, Keith R.; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2013). What Drives the Swing Voter in Africa?. American Journal of Political Science.

Public opinion and polling

• Achen, Christopher H. (1975). Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response. American Political Science Review.
• Achen, Christopher H.; Bartels, Larry M. (2016). Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (introduction). Princeton University Press.
• Bailey, Michael A. (2024). Polling at a Crossroads (chapter 1). Cambridge University Press.
• Broockman, David E.; Skovron, Christopher (2018). Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion Among Political Elites. American Political Science Review.
• Butler, Daniel M.; Nickerson, David W. (2011). Can Learning Constituency Opinion Affect How Legislators Vote?. Quarterly Journal of Political Science.
• Manza, Jeff; Cook, Fay Lomax (2002). The Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy: The State of the Debate. In Navigating Public Opinion, Oxford University Press.
• Page, Benjamin I.; Shapiro, Robert Y. (1983). Effects of Public Opinion on Policy. American Political Science Review.
• Stoetzer, Lukas F.; Leemann, Lucas; Traunmueller, Richard (2024). Learning from Polls During Electoral Campaigns. Political Behavior.
• Taylor, Humphrey (2002). The Value of Polls in Promoting Good Government and Democracy. In Navigating Public Opinion, Oxford University Press.
• Zaller, John (1992). The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (pp. 6-39). Cambridge University Press.
• Zaller, John; Feldman, Stanley (1992). A simple theory of the survey response: Answering questions versus revealing preferences. American Journal of Political Science.

Targeting, mobilization and digital strategy

• Bhatti, Yosef; Dahlgaard, Jens Olav; Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard; Hansen, Kasper M. (2019). Is Door-to-Door Canvassing Effective in Europe? Evidence from a Meta-study across Six European Countries. British Journal of Political Science.
• Bonilla, Lauren; Shagdar, Tuya (2018). Electoral gifting and personal politics in Mongolia’s parliamentary election season. Central Asian Survey.
• Fitzpatrick, Jasmin; Nostitz, Felix-Christopher von (2024). Reaching the Voters: Parties’ Use of Google Ads in the 2021 German Federal Election. Media and Communication.
• Foos, Florian (2024). The use of AI by election campaigns (working paper, London School of Economics).
• Fridkin, Kim L.; Kenney, Patrick J. (2011). The Role of Candidate Traits in Campaigns. Journal of Politics.
• Gibson, Rachel K. (2015). Party change, social media and the rise of ‘citizen-initiated’ campaigning. Party Politics.
• Hersh, Eitan (2015). Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters (chapters 1 and 2). Cambridge University Press.
• Kernell, Georgia (2009). Giving Order to Districts: Estimating Voter Distributions with National Election Returns. Political Analysis.
• Roemmele, Andrea; Gibson, Rachel (2020). Scientific and subversive: The two faces of the fourth era of political campaigning. New Media & Society.

Media, information and misinformation

• Bevan, Shaun; Krewel, Mona (2015). Responsive elections: The effect of public opinion on political campaigns. Electoral Studies.
• Guess, Andrew; Nyhan, Brendan; Reifler, Jason (2020). Exposure to Untrustworthy Websites in the 2016 U.S. Election. Nature Human Behaviour.
• Lazer, David M. J.; Baum, Matthew A.; Benkler, Yochai; Berinsky, Adam J.; Greenhill, Kelly M.; Menczer, Filippo et al. (2018). The science of fake news. Science.
• McCabe, Stefan D.; Ferrari, Diogo; Green, Jon; Lazer, David M. J.; Esterling, Kevin M. (2024). Post-January 6th deplatforming reduced the reach of misinformation on Twitter. Nature.
• Nyhan, Brendan; Reifler, Jason (2010). When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions. Political Behavior.

Negative campaigning and democratic norms

• Berelson, Bernard; Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix; McPhee, William N. (1954). Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (chapter 14). University of Chicago Press.
• Clayton, Katherine; Davis, Nicholas T.; Nyhan, Brendan; Porter, Ethan; Ryan, Timothy J.; Wood, Thomas J. (2021). Elite rhetoric can undermine democratic norms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• Costa, Mia (2021). Ideology, Not Affect: What Americans Want from Political Representation. American Journal of Political Science.
• Dalton, Russell J. (2008). Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation. Political Studies.
• Geer, John Gray (2006). In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns (introduction). University of Chicago Press.
• Jacob, Marc S.; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J. (2026). Entrepreneurs of conflict: A descriptive analysis of when and how political elites use divisive rhetoric. PNAS Nexus.
• Lau, Richard R.; Rovner, Ivy Brown (2009). Negative Campaigning. Annual Review of Political Science.

Campaigning where competition is unfair

• Bermeo, Nancy G. (2003). Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy (chapter 2). Princeton University Press.
• Bunce, Valerie J.; Wolchik, Sharon L. (2010). Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes. World Politics.
• Chiopris, Caterina; Nalepa, Monika; Vanberg, Georg (2025). A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Citizen Uncertainty and Democratic Backsliding. Journal of Politics.
• Gandhi, Jennifer; Ong, Elvin (2019). Committed or Conditional Democrats? Opposition Dynamics in Electoral Autocracies. American Journal of Political Science.
• Guriev, Sergei; Treisman, Daniel (2020). The Popularity of Authoritarian Leaders. World Politics.
• Jacob, Marc S. (2024). Citizens as a democratic safeguard? The sequence of sanctioning elite attacks on democracy. American Journal of Political Science.
• Simonovits, Gabor; Szucs, Ferenc; Hamrak, Bence (2025). Door to door campaigning in an electoral autocracy: Evidence from Hungary. Journal of Politics.
• Svolik, Milan W. (2019). Polarization versus Democracy. Journal of Democracy.
• Svolik, Milan W. (2023). Voting Against Autocracy. World Politics.

Rules, institutions and representation

• Carey, John M.; Shugart, Matthew Soberg (1995). Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: A rank ordering of electoral formulas. Electoral Studies.
• Dovi, Suzanne (2002). Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?. American Political Science Review.
• Eggers, Andrew C.; Vivyan, Nick (2020). Who Votes More Strategically?. American Political Science Review.
• Fouirnaies, Alexander (2021). How Do Campaign Spending Limits Affect Elections? Evidence from the United Kingdom 1885-2019. American Political Science Review.
• Lupia, Arthur; Matsusaka, John G. (2004). Direct Democracy: New Approaches to Old Questions. Annual Review of Political Science.
• Mansbridge, Jane (1999). Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes’. Journal of Politics.
• Núñez, Lucas (2025). Encouraging loyalty and defection: The impact of campaigns on tactical voting in Britain. American Journal of Political Science.
• Sudulich, Laura; Trumm, Siim (2019). A Comparative Study of the Effects of Electoral Institutions on Campaigns. British Journal of Political Science.

Citizens, elites and accountability

• Dahl, Robert A. (1971). Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (chapter 1). Yale University Press.
• Delli Carpini, Michael X.; Keeter, Scott (1996). What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters (chapters 1 and 2). Yale University Press.
• Galston, William A. (2001). Political Knowledge, Political Engagement, and Civic Education. Annual Review of Political Science.
• Mansbridge, Jane (2003). Rethinking Representation. American Political Science Review.
• Schmitter, Philippe C. (2004). The Quality of Democracy: The Ambiguous Virtues of Accountability. Journal of Democracy.

Campaigns in practice

• Bonica, Adam (2025). The New York Times argues moving to the center is the way to win, but the data shows the strategy is tapped out.
• Broockman, David E.; Kalla, Joshua L.; Caballero, Christian; Easton, Matthew (2024). Political practitioners poorly predict which messages persuade the public. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• Erickson, Robert S.; Wlezien, Christopher (2012). The Timeline of Presidential Elections: How Campaigns Do (and Do Not) Matter (chapter 3). University of Chicago Press.
• The New York Times (2025). The partisans are wrong: moving to the center is the way to win.