About the UMass Poll

Since 2010, the UMass Poll has upheld a distinguished record of producing high-quality public opinion polls. Our polls cover a range of political topics to provide insight into how Americans think—and why.

The UMass Poll Is Led by a Team of Nationally Renowned Experts

Our team specializes in survey research methods, American public opinion, race, ethnicity, immigration, parties, partisanship and polarization, and public policymaking.

Executive Team

Tatishe M. Nteta

Director of UMass Poll

Tatishe Nteta is a leading expert in the area of polling and public opinion. Nteta’s research on public opinion has been published in top peer-reviewed journals, including Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, and Political Communication. His work has also been cited in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, NPR, Vox, and Fox News.

Ray La Raja

Co-Director of UMass Poll

Ray La Raja is a leading authority on political parties, interest groups, elections, campaign finance and state politics. He is the founding co-editor of The Forum, a journal of applied research in American politics, author of Small Change: Money, Political Parties and Campaign Finance Reform, and co-author of the award winning Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Atlantic.

Jesse Rhodes

Co-Director of UMass Poll

Jesse Rhodes is a leading expert in social policy, voting rights, inequality, and political behavior. He is the author of An Education in Politics: The Origin and Development of No Child Left Behind and Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act, and his work has appeared in Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and Presidential Studies Quarterly, as well as in popular venues such as the New York Times and Washington Post.

Alexander Theodoridis

Co-Director of UMass Poll

Alexander Theodoridis is a leading expert in American electoral politics, with a focus on political behavior/psychology, campaign effects, policy attitudes to understand the ways in which citizens interact with the political world in an era of hyper-polarization. He published in the Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, Political Behavior, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, Political Psychology, Election Law Journal, Environmental Politics, The Forum, and PS, and has been recognized by the John Sullivan Award, the Elections Public Opinion and Voting Behavior Best Paper Award, and the Society for Political Methodology's Warren Miller Prize. It has also been featured by the New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, Time, CNN, The Hindu, The Economist and many other media outlets.

Graduate Fellows

Sydney V. Brake

Graduate Poll Fellow

Sydney V. Brake is a third-year Ph.D. student in the department of political science. Her research lies in political psychology and public opinion, with a focus on political polarization, the psychology of legitimacy in American politics, and the emotional and identity-based foundations of political behavior. Broadly, she is interested in how citizens form and maintain trust in political institutions and how perceptions of legitimacy shape attitudes toward democratic norms and behavior. She is also interested in how perceptions of group status, identity threat, and masculinity shape attitudes

Lane Cuthbert

Graduate Poll Fellow

Lane is a Ph.D. student studying political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he serves as a graduate student fellow on the UMass Poll. At the UMass Poll, Lane is involved in the design, analysis, and presentation of public opinion data from Massachusetts and national polls.

Lane's academic focus lies in American public opinion, political psychology, and political behavior. His research addresses the role of affective polarization in American politics and cognitive biases in the mass public. Lane's dissertation investigates public opinion toward and media coverage of

Adam Eichen

Lead Graduate Poll Fellow

Adam is a PhD student in political science and serves as a graduate fellow of the UMass Poll. He assists with the creation, analysis, and dissemination of all national and Massachusetts polls, and manages undergraduate projects associated with the poll. His polling analysis has been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and The Conversation.

Adam’s academic interests span American public opinion, political psychology, and American political development. He is the co-author of a number of working papers. These include investigations of racial biases in constituent responsiveness in state

Tim Komatsu

Graduate Poll Fellow

Tim is a third year Ph.D. student in the department of political science. His research centers on public perceptions of democratic legitimacy and the ways that these perceptions are affected by inequality and polarization. He is also interested in exploring how public opinion shapes and is shaped by political institutions and the law. Tim also serves as a fellow in the Center for Justice, Law, and Societies.

Jesse Usher Barrett

Graduate Poll Fellow

Jesse is a 4th year Ph.D. student in the department of political science. His research focuses on political psychology and behavior with a special interest in conspiracy theories and misinformation, political extremism and violence, and the role of the media. He also is interested in judicial politics, exploring polarization, partisanship, and institutional legitimacy of the state and federal courts.

Undergraduate Poll Fellows

Madelyn Parker

Madelyn is a class of 2027 Commonwealth Honors College student majoring in Political Science and a Data Analytics and Computational Social Science MS 4+1 student. Her interests include public opinion, political behavior, political polarization, religion in politics, and race in politics. Her recent research focuses on the effects of mega-identities in American politics and how religious groups interact with politicians.

Rahi Patel

Rahi ('28) is a Commonwealth Honors College Student majoring in Political Science and Managerial Economics. Her academic interests include political psychology, economic inequalities, and critical race theory. Outside of her research assistantship, she is currently serving as a legal assistant under the Student Legal Services Office.

See the full UMass Poll team.