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talimendelberg.bsky.social
@talimendelberg.bsky.social
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talimendelberg.bsky.social
The Boomers Are Protesting Trump. Where Is Gen Z? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/o...
Opinion | The Boomers Are Protesting Trump. Where Is Gen Z?
www.nytimes.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:05 AM
talimendelberg.bsky.social
Excellent article on an important topic
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
What Is Ideological Capture and How Do We Measure It? Using Antitrust Reform to Understand Expert–Public Cleavages | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core
What Is Ideological Capture and How Do We Measure It? Using Antitrust Reform to Understand Expert–Public Cleavages
www.cambridge.org
November 21, 2025 at 2:20 PM
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csdp.bsky.social
Applications due October 20th.
September 8, 2025 at 3:16 PM
talimendelberg.bsky.social
Delighted this book won the APSA South Asia Frankle Prize, and proud it’s published in our Princeton Behavior Series! Migrants and Machine Politics | Princeton University Press press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Migrants and Machine Politics
How poor migrants shape city politics during urbanization
press.princeton.edu
September 10, 2025 at 1:31 PM
talimendelberg.bsky.social
Happy to see our article published! "Race, Voice, and Authority in Discussion Groups" with @elizabethelder.bsky.social, @profkarpo.bsky.social,and David Ribar
Race, Voice, and Authority in Discussion Groups | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core
Race, Voice, and Authority in Discussion Groups - Volume 23 Issue 3
www.cambridge.org
September 9, 2025 at 7:48 PM
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csdp.bsky.social
puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...
https://puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/apply/index.xhtml;jsessionid=2OEppk7LukLedBLTNM5r0N7lJWQ_iWSupk4IpPe1joOyRCOgRQkw!-1632854922
September 8, 2025 at 2:07 PM
talimendelberg.bsky.social
please apply to our Princeton CSDP fellowships! Due *October 20th*

Post-Doctoral Associate:
puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Visiting Scholar:
www.princeton.edu/acad-positio...
puwebp.princeton.edu
September 5, 2025 at 2:26 PM
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princetonpolitics.bsky.social
Princeton's SPIA highlights the work of Professor Tali Mendelberg @talimendelberg.bsky.social and Claire Willeck looking at college age voter participation.

spia.princeton.edu/news/researc...
Research Record: Increasing Voter Turnout Among College-Aged Students | Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton SPIA’s Research Record series highlights the vast scholarly achievements of our faculty members, whose expertise extends beyond the classroom and into everyday life.If you’d like your work c...
spia.princeton.edu
August 25, 2025 at 5:52 PM
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carlquintanilla.bsky.social
Imagine if they’d had sandwiches. 🥪
August 15, 2025 at 5:37 PM
talimendelberg.bsky.social
My article with Claire Willeck about how colleges can help students turn out to vote just published in @polbehavior.bsky.social nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
“How Colleges Can Increase Civic Engagement”
nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
July 22, 2025 at 6:03 PM
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owasow.bsky.social
Nearly half of Trump’s 2020 campaign money came from non-wealthy donors, yet GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill cuts health benefits for ~11.8 million while preserving tax breaks for the rich.

Question now: Can Trump’s “plutopopulist” coalition hold? cup.org/4cfm0Az
owasow.bsky.social Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · Jun 4
A recent @nytimes.com analysis found that over the last three presidential elections "Republicans are overwhelmingly making gains in working-class counties. Democrats are improving almost exclusively in wealthier areas." Our research shows similar patterns among donors. 🧵 cup.org/4cfm0Az
Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base SEAN KATES, ERIC MANNING, TALI MENDELBERG and OMAR WASOW Comparative scholarship suggests authoritarian candidates often rely on backing from the wealthy. The wealthy are also said to play an important role in American campaign finance. Studies of Donald Trump, however, found that he drew significant support from white Americans with less education and privilege. We evaluate wealthy and non-wealthy Americans’ financial support for Trump, compared to other candidates, by constructing a comprehensive dataset of property values matched to contributions and voter files. We find Trump underperformed among wealthy Republican donors while mobilizing new non-wealthy donors. Trump also diversified the donorate, especially by education. That is, Trump built an unusual coalition of wealthy and non-wealthy donors. Our results support an alternative, “plutopopulist” model of Trump’s financial base.
June 29, 2025 at 3:42 PM
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justinwolfers.bsky.social
Grok, what is crony capitalism?
June 5, 2025 at 7:00 PM
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chrislhayes.bsky.social
I'm just glad one of these men has the nuclear codes and the other has all our personal data.
June 5, 2025 at 8:24 PM
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adambonica.bsky.social
Democracy thrives on equality.

Equality requires inclusion.🏳️‍🌈

Our democracy is strongest when everyone can participate fully and authentically. Happy Pride to all who make our communities more vibrant and our democracy more complete.
June 1, 2025 at 6:46 PM
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muellershewrote.com
Statement from the NJAG Matt Platkin
May 20, 2025 at 4:30 AM
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owasow.bsky.social
The GOP’s identity crisis over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” exposes a core tension in today’s Republican Party: a “plutopopulist” coalition where wealthy donor interests clash with the party’s increasingly non-wealthy voter base. 🧵 1/ cup.org/4cfm0Az
Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base SEAN KATES, ERIC MANNING, TALI MENDELBERG and OMAR WASOW Comparative scholarship suggests authoritarian candidates often rely on backing from the wealthy. The wealthy are also said to play an important role in American campaign finance. Studies of Donald Trump, however, found that he drew significant support from white Americans with less education and privilege. We evaluate wealthy and non-wealthy Americans’ financial support for Trump, compared to other candidates, by constructing a comprehensive dataset of property values matched to contributions and voter files. We find Trump underperformed among wealthy Republican donors while mobilizing new non-wealthy donors. Trump also diversified the donorate, especially by education. That is, Trump built an unusual coalition of wealthy and non-wealthy donors. Our results support an alternative, “plutopopulist” model of Trump’s financial base.
May 17, 2025 at 9:08 PM
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princetonpolitics.bsky.social
"It’s futile to predict specifically what Trump would do. Unpredictability is one of his characteristics." Professor Tali Mendelberg quoted in @nytimes.com guest essay @talimendelberg.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/o...
Opinion | How Does a Stymied Autocrat Deal With Defeat?
www.nytimes.com
May 13, 2025 at 6:42 PM
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owasow.bsky.social
Co-authors on “Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base” are Sean Kates, Eric Manning and @talimendelberg.bsky.social . cup.org/4cfm0Az
Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core
Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base
cup.org
May 17, 2025 at 9:18 PM
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apsa.bsky.social
🚨 Urge your senators and house representatives to support for FY 2026 Science Funding! Send a quick note to your House Representatives and Senators urging them to sign each of the Dear Colleague Letters.

Learn more at the COSSA Action Center: buff.ly/bHQ66dc #WhySocialScience
Action Center | COSSA
A consortium of Social Science Associations works to communicate the importance of social & behavioral science research to policymakers. The powerful stories come from people who express how it is…
cossa.org
May 15, 2025 at 4:07 PM
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jaylyall.bsky.social
This is a shameful decision that hurts national security, flies in the face of DoD's own decade-long experience with transgender soldiers who have served honorably, and is flatly unconstitutional. What a disgrace.
Supreme Court lets Trump ban transgender troops while case continues
LGBTQ advocates said the Trump administration’s purge of transgender troops is unconstitutional and will hurt national security and waste resources.
www.washingtonpost.com
May 6, 2025 at 9:45 PM
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acyn.bsky.social
Warnock: Don’t lecture to me about meritocracy while I witness you nominate the most unfit unqualified people we’ve ever seen.

You cannot lecture me about merit while nominating Pete Hegseth…
May 4, 2025 at 11:33 PM
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wildebees.bsky.social
Fascinating.
owasow.bsky.social Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · May 4
In terms of donors, Trump complicates the oligarchy story. While most of his 2020 funding (55%) came from the top 10%, that’s the lowest reliance on wealthy of any candidate we studied. Nearly 45% of 2020 donations came from bottom 90%—a remarkable shift for a Republican. 3/ cup.org/4cfm0Az
Figure 2 in paper presents the proportion of a campaign’s itemized total from each wealth group in stacked bar charts. Each bar represents a candidate-year, with segments showing the percentage of total dollars that come from each of four wealth bins. In both 2016 and 2020, Trump was much less reliant on the wealthy than Romney. Compared to Romney, Trump’s share of dollars from the bottom 90% is 9 percentage points higher in 2016, and 20 percentage points higher in 2020. In dollar terms, Trump got 2.7 times more dollars than Romney from the bottom 90% (in 2020). Likewise, Trump’s share from the top 1% (the sum of the top two bins) is 9 and 15 percentage points lower than Romney’s. To be sure, most of Trump’s dollars still came from the wealthy. Even in 2020, the wealthiest 10% gave him 55% of his dollars. However, the bottom 90% nearly matched them. To put this in sharp relief, the candidate with a wealth distribution of dollars closest to Trump’s in 2020 is Obama.
May 4, 2025 at 6:34 PM
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owasow.bsky.social
For a longer, more detailed overview of the Plutopopulism paper, see: bsky.app/profile/owas...
owasow.bsky.social Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · Apr 16
Were wealthy donors key to Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020?

I'm thrilled to announce a new paper in which Sean Kates, Eric Manning, Tali Mendelberg and I analyzed data on 108 million (!) homeowner-voters.

See “Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base.” Open access: cup.org/4cfm0Az 🧵 1/
Title page of an academic article titled “Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base.” Authors listed are Sean Kates (University of Pennsylvania), Eric Manning (Princeton University), Tali Mendelberg (Princeton University), and Omar Wasow (University of California, Berkeley). The abstract below the title states: Comparative scholarship suggests authoritarian candidates often rely on backing from the wealthy. The wealthy are also said to play an important role in American campaign finance. Studies of Donald Trump, however, found that he drew significant support from white Americans with less education and privilege. We evaluate wealthy and non-wealthy Americans’ financial support for Trump, compared to other candidates, by constructing a comprehensive dataset of property values matched to contributions and voter files. We find Trump underperformed among wealthy Republican donors while mobilizing new non-wealthy donors. Trump also diversified the donorate, especially by education. That is, Trump built an unusual coalition of wealthy and non-wealthy donors. Our results support an alternative, “plutopopulist” model of Trump’s financial base. This study demonstrates the importance of studying both non-wealthy and wealthy Americans, the group who give the most but whose individual behavior has been studied the least. Open access link to paper: http://cup.org/4cfm0Az
May 4, 2025 at 5:21 PM
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owasow.bsky.social
The oligarchy debate isn’t either/or. Our data reveal that candidates like Trump in 2020 (and Obama in 2012) are able to build unusual “plutopopulist” coalitions combining reduced (yet substantial) elite support with massive non-wealthy mobilization. cup.org/4cfm0Az
Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core
Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base
cup.org
May 4, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted
owasow.bsky.social
In 2020, Trump’s support surged among non-wealthy donors. Compared to Romney, Trump’s support among bottom 90% grew 172%, while top 1% was basically flat. 4/ cup.org/4cfm0Az
Figure 3 in paper. Bar charts showing Percent Change in Fundraising between Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016 and 2020, by Wealth Rank. In 2016, Trump lost 73% of Romney’s dollars from the top 1%, but lost only 55% of Romney’s dollars from the bottom 90%. In 2020, Trump recovered among the wealthy: the top 1% contributed similar totals to Trump and Romney, and the top 0.1% gave Trump 16% more than Romney. However, the most striking result from 2020 is Trump’s increased fundraising from the non-wealthy. The bottom 90% gave him 172% more than Romney. These findings reveal that Trump’s financing depended much less on the wealthy than did Romney’s. To be sure, Trump fully recovered wealthy dollars in 2020. But he more than recovered non-wealthy dollars. Trump’s non-wealthy dollars and shares are dramatically larger than Romney’s (and the largest in the figure). Open access link to paper: http://cup.org/4cfm0Az
May 4, 2025 at 4:31 PM