Arica Schuett
Research
When Changing Voters Changes Elections: Evaluating
Determinants of Electoral Shift in Georgia, 2016-2022
To better understand the sources of recent electoral change in Georgia, I build on recent work by Hill, Hopkins, and Huber 2021 and use individual, precinct, and county-level data across four elections to determine where, when, and how changes in the composition of the electorate contribute to sustained political shifts in Georgia. Voter file data allows me to track residential movement, race/ethnicity, and voter turnout in the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections. Using a panel and difference-in-differences approach, I track changes in the racial composition of precincts around Georgia, including how much of the changes can be attributed to individuals joining the Georgia electorate for the first time. While increases in a precinct's share of Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters are associated with Democratic gains, this association is limited largely to existing Georgia voters moving around but not into the state. My results further show that Democratic gains in Atlanta's suburbs are explained by changes in demographic composition, not white voters supporting the Democratic party at higher rates than they had previously.
The Supply of Demands:
What Black Lives Matter Demanded in 2020
Protesters in 2020 mobilized unprecedented numbers of Americans using social media. Although social scientists are familiar with online mobilization, until now, no study has examined exactly what local chapters said online to encourage participation and bring Americans to their side. This study examines the Twitter posts of Black Lives Matter chapters in the 100 largest cities in the US during the first three weeks of protest following the killing of George Floyd. This study reveals how these organizations articulated their cause at the only time in history when Black Lives Matter had majority public support. I find that chapters focused primarily on encouraging participation in person and online. I also find that organizations used this opportunity to link an issue receiving unprecedented national attention to local politics, criticize relevant officials, share history to bring context to current events, and collectively imagine alternatives to our status quo.
Both undergraduate students and faculty members face a challenging job market that requires innovative approaches to skill development and research products. Moreover, entrenched approaches to research and education reinforce traditional hierarchies, exclusionary norms, and exploitative practices. This article describes a lab-based pedagogical framework designed to support faculty research goals and student learning and, simultaneously, to attenuate patterns of historical exclusion. This approach leverages evidence-based best practices from experiential education, team-based workflows, an understanding of servant leadership, and “whole-person”–style mentorship models. We find that these tools advance faculty research goals (in terms of both quality and productivity), support student learning in ways beyond traditional undergraduate coursework, and disrupt patterns of historical exclusion. We provide qualitative evidence to support our model and discuss the hurdles and challenges still to be overcome.
Ethnographies of gentrification, by using interviews, suggest individual and group sentiments about it as a form of revitalisation are heterogenous, even within neighbourhoods experiencing it. Discerning variation and changes over time in citywide sentiments about gentrification, however, is a challenge. It requires city-level survey data, especially longitudinal data, which is scarce. We use novel data from Washington Post surveys of District of Columbia (i.e. Washington, DC) residents between 2000 and 2016 to test predictions of city-level gentrification opinions, deduced from neighbourhood-based ethnographies of gentrification. We observe and emphasise how, over time, race is consistently associated with opinion divergence about gentrification, including perceptions of its inequalities and consequences. Our findings demonstrate the value of citywide surveys for extending empirical findings from neighbourhood-level ethnographies of gentrification.