Megan Goldberg, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Politics at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. Ph.D. in 2019 from the department of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduate student affiliate of the MIT Political Methodology Lab. Studies American politics, focusing on state politics, political messaging, public opinion, and quantitative methodology. Her work examines the dynamics of state politics in an increasingly nationalized context. Studies how governors and state parties shift their rhetoric towards elections, and how the mass public reacts to such shifts. Looks for changes in ideological heterogeneity among political elites as elections approach, and how often governors use national politics to frame issues. Finally, examines the public’s response to the governor’s “going national.” Uses social media data, text analysis, and survey experiments to answer these questions. Research addresses the relevance and consequences of a federal system when it comes to state politics and political behavior. This question is increasingly important as we are faced with evidence that state political idiosyncrasies are disappearing. Methodologically, work looks to bring text and social media to answer this question in ways we are unable to do with existing data sources, such as state of the state addresses or state party platforms.