WashU Political Science

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 member, and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dan Butler, was recently interviewed about the work he and his co-authors did to create their 2024 Primary Election Dataset.

The Primary Election Study (PES), as it is called, is a survey dataset designed to "facilitate the study of voter behavior, attitudes, and decision-making in U.S. primary elections." The PES was fielded during the 2024 U.S. Senate primary elections in California, Michigan, and Nevada and includes both representative samples of the adult population and large oversamples of likely primary voters. It collected data from 8124 respondents through a pre-election survey administered in the weeks leading up to each state’s primary contest.

Watch Professor Butler's interview and learn more about the study at the link in our bio!

*Cue the banners and applause!*

It was announced today that Assistant Professor Michael Strawbridge has been named a prestigious 2026 Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York!

Strawbridge is one of 24 scholars from across the US and Canada to be named to the fellowship, and each fellow will receive a $200,000 research stipend to explore the causes of political polarization and to identify possible solutions.

Strawbridge plans to use the fellowship to continue work on his project, "In the Thick of It: The Relationship Among Black People, Black Spaces, and Black Political Unity," which investigates how African American cultural institutions foster Black political unity and collective decision-making.

"My research reflects my lived experiences as a Black man in America," Strawbridge said. "I’m honored by this award, which affirms the importance of that work and allows me to further demonstrate the central role of Black people and Black culture in shaping the past, present, and future of American politics and life."

We are endlessly proud of Prof. Strawbridge, and we are so lucky to have him in our department! You can read more about the award and Prof. Strawbridge's research on our website: https://buff.ly/0rUes1N