Politics and Equal Participation Lab

We systematically collect and analyze interview, survey, and census data on both people who hold political power (such as elected officials and campaign professionals) and people from communities with relatively little political influence or engagement. We have three main research projects:

The Missing Voices/Pennsylvania Participation Project is the biggest part of the Politics and Equal Participation Lab. We interview poor and working class people from around the state about their thoughts about and experiences with electoral politics. Our work is designed and carried out with the participation of people from poor and working class communities.
The Race, Class, Geography and Voting project is a long-running project with Hana Brown and Ankit Rastogi. We look at how race, class, gender and place matter for who votes. Our current project explores the relationship between the race/ethnicity of a city’s mayor and the rates of voting in different racial groups in major cities across the US over the last 50 years.
The Campaign Careers database project is collecting information on every person who has worked on a Presidential campaign for either party, in the general or the primary elections. An earlier version of this database was featured in the book Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Privileged Few Shape Politics for All of Us and we are continuing to update it.

The research lab is supported by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility at Swarthmore College and by Professor Laurison’s Carnegie Fellowship.