Mellissa Meisels

Mellissa Meisels

Assistant Professor of Political Science

Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, where I am affiliated with Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) and Center for the Study of American Politics (CSAP).

My research centers on the U.S. Congress, money in politics, electoral campaigns, and political organizations. Much of this work investigates the strategic choices of candidates and financial contributors in congressional campaigns, with an emphasis on primary elections. To do so, I employ original data, natural language processing, causal inference tools, experiments, and structural estimation of formal models. My research is forthcoming and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and Political Science Research and Methods.

Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow at CSAP and a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar at the University of Rochester. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science at Vanderbilt University, where I was affiliated with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI). I graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in political science from UCLA. I am originally from Portland, Oregon.

 

Publications

Meisels, Mellissa. 2025. Candidate Positions, Responsiveness, and Returns to Extremism. Forthcoming, Journal of Politics. PDF Publisher Replication

Abstract The concept of candidate positioning is central to the study of U.S. elections, representation, and political behavior. Existing work, however, overwhelmingly relies on indirect measures which may not reflect candidates’ stated positions. I analyze foundational relationships between candidate positions and district partisanship, primary electoral success, and primary fundraising performance with existing approaches versus text scaling estimates based on an original collection of campaign platforms from House primary candidates' websites in 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024. Directly measuring candidates' positions using campaign platforms leads to conclusions vastly different than those reached with existing measures. While platform-based measures suggest candidates are responsive to their districts, existing measures do not. Within district, however, existing measures show financial and electoral penalties to extremism in primaries, but platform-based measures show no such penalty. These findings have wide-ranging implications for a number of ongoing scholarly debates which involve congressional candidates' positions.

 

Meisels, Mellissa. 2025. Strategic Campaign Attention to Abortion Before and After Dobbs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122(20): e2503080122. PDF Publisher Replication

Abstract In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional protection of abortion rights established in Roe v. Wade. In doing so, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization moved status quo on abortion policy more into line with the Republican Party’s stance. Subsequent research has documented the decision’s impact on mass political behavior and opinion, yet less is known about its impact on the behavior of political elites. I provide evidence on congressional candidates’ strategic responses to the decision with original data on campaign platforms (N = 4,703) from election cycles before and after Dobbs. After the decision, Democrats became significantly more likely to campaign on abortion and to do so using unambiguous language, while Republicans increasingly obfuscated their positions on the issue. Pre-post-Dobbs change in partisan divergence in campaign attention to abortion was driven most strongly by candidates in states with abortion bans set to take effect upon overturning of Roe (i.e., trigger laws and/or pre-Roe laws). Importantly, these shifting patterns of campaign attention were not present in other issue domains, consistent with changes in attention to abortion being driven by Dobbs rather than other contemporaneous factors.

 

Meisels, Mellissa. 2025. Everything in Moderation? The Effect of Extremist Nominations on Individual and Corporate PAC Fundraising. FirstView, Political Science Research and Methods. PDF Publisher Replication

Abstract Do ideologically extreme candidates enjoy fundraising advantages over more moderate candidates? Extant work documents a relationship between candidates' positions and campaign contributions subnationally and in donor surveys, yet identification challenges have hampered investigation in the congressional context. I employ a close primaries regression discontinuity design to examine how "as-if random" nominations of extreme versus moderate House candidates influence general election contributions from individual donors and corporate PACs from 1980 to 2020. Results at both the nominee and contributor levels demonstrate that corporate PACs financially penalize extremists while individual donors respond similarly to extreme and moderate candidates. These findings contribute to ongoing debates regarding the extent and nature of campaign contributors' role in congressional polarization.

 

Meisels, Mellissa, Joshua D. Clinton, and Gregory A. Huber. 2024. Giving to the Extreme? Experimental Evidence on Donor Response to Candidate and District Characteristics. British Journal of Political Science 54(3): 851–873. PDF Publisher LSE USPP Writeup Replication

Abstract How does candidate ideology affect donors' contribution decisions in U.S. House elections? Studies of donor motivations have struggled with confounding of candidate, donor, and district characteristics in observational data and the difficulty of assessing trade-offs in surveys. We investigate how these factors affect contribution decisions using experimental vignettes administered to 7,000 verified midterm donors. While ideological congruence influences donors' likelihood of contributing to a candidate, district competitiveness and opponent extremity are equally important. Moreover, the response to ideology is asymmetric and heterogeneous: donors penalize more moderate candidates five times more heavily than more extreme candidates, with the most extreme donors exhibiting the greatest preference for candidates even more extreme than themselves. Republicans also exhibit a greater relative preference for extremism than Democrats, although partisan differences are smaller than differences by donor extremism. Our findings suggest that strategic considerations matter, and donors incentivize candidate extremism even more than previously thought.

 

Papers

Campaign Agendas and Issue Group Strategy in Congressional Primaries Paper

Abstract Which candidates do issue–focused PACs support? Longstanding theories suggest an emphasis on either accessing friendly incumbents or helping elect new potential allies, yet systematic evaluation requires information on candidate–side issue priorities. I combine an original dataset of all available House primary candidates’ policy platforms spanning 2016 through 2024 with FEC receipts and bill summaries to measure campaign attention, PAC contributions, and legislative behavior across 42,000 candidate–issue–year observations. Using a series of within–candidate research designs, I first demonstrate that candidates raise more money from groups related to their campaign issues. Leveraging changes in officeholder status, I then show that a substantially larger incumbency advantage in issue PAC fundraising is afforded to such “issue champions” — a difference not explained by actual legislative activity. These results provide new evidence that policy–demanding groups use campaign rhetoric to identify and foster relationships with potential champions of their cause during the increasingly important primary stage of congressional elections.

 

Constructing Consensus Ideal Points Using Multi-Source Data (with Melody Huang and Tiffany M. Tang) Paper arXiv

Abstract In the advent of big data and machine learning, researchers now have a wealth of congressional candidate ideal point estimates at their disposal for theory testing. Weak relationships raise questions about the extent to which they capture a shared quantity — rather than idiosyncratic, domain--specific factors — yet different measures are used interchangeably in most substantive analyses. Moreover, questions central to the study of American politics implicate relationships between candidate ideal points and other variables derived from the same data sources, introducing endogeneity. We propose a method, consensus multidimensional scaling (CoMDS), which better aligns with how applied scholars use ideal points in practice. CoMDS captures the shared, stable associations of a set of underlying ideal point estimates and can be interpreted as their common spatial representation. We illustrate the utility of our approach for assessing relationships within domains of existing measures and provide a suite of diagnostic tools to aid in practical usage.

 

Competition and Free-Riding in Electoral Campaigns with Outside Spending (with Brenton Kenkel)

 

Asymmetrically Polarized Threat of Replacement

 

Teaching

Yale PLSC 3256/8050 (UG/G): Elite Behavior in Congressional Elections Syllabus

Course Description This seminar examines the behavior of political elites in US congressional elections. Although voters ultimately determine election outcomes, the dynamics of electoral campaigns are fundamentally shaped by the choices of candidates, political parties, activists, and financial contributors. Political elites' behavior is a function of not just their straightforward preferences, but the incentives that they face. Among other topics, this course will cover the congressional election "fundamentals" in primary versus general elections, the positions and priorities candidates articulate in their campaigns, how parties, donors, and interest groups choose which candidates to support, and the potential effects of commonly proposed campaign finance and electoral reforms. Throughout the semester, special emphasis is placed on the challenges involved in making inferences about strategic interactions among political elites. Students not only become familiar with how political scientists conduct research, but also learn to reflect critically on the merits and limitations of existing approaches.

 

Yale PLSC 2255 (UG): Special Interest Politics in the US Syllabus

Course Description This class examines how citizens and groups participate in US politics and policymaking via campaign contributions and lobbying. From elections all the way to bureaucratic policy implementation, special interests have many opportunities to attempt to pull policy closer to their preferences. Students become familiar with the regulatory environments structuring current laws regarding the revolving door and campaign finance (e.g. Citizens United), potential avenues of participation for special interests (e.g. political donations, independent expenditures, lobbying), the goals and preferences of different types of special interests (e.g. individual donors, ideological and issue groups, public interest and identity groups, corporations, local governments), groups' organizational structures (e.g. PACs, Super PACs, "dark money" groups), and current evidence on widely-discussed reforms meant to curb the political influence of special interests.