Exploration and Discovery

Ian McDonald (Ph.D. 2009, Duke University) teaches U.S. government and U.S. politics courses, including upper division courses on Congress, the Presidency, political parties, public opinion, and the media, along with a graduate level course in research design. Professor McDonald was a visiting faculty member at Portland State University in Portland in 2010-11, at Lewis & Clark in 2009-10 and 2011-12. His dissertation Migration, Sorting, and Polarization in the American Electorate examines the link between geographic mobility and polarization observed among voters and Congress. Professor McDonald co-authored a chapter in Why Not Parties? on U.S. Senate constituency evolution between 1933 and 2004, and also co-authored an article (with Regina G. Lawrence) on televised coverage of the September 11 attacks. His recent work looks at the effect of rapid population growth and representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, and building datasets with geocoded political preference data.