Matthew Levendusky on civics, partisan politics, and teaching public opinion
Matthew Levendusky has been named a joint professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and in the Department of Political Science in the School of Arts & Sciences.
2 min. read
Matthew Levendusky is an expert in public opinion research and political communication, with a particular emphasis on the causes and consequences of political polarization and on how we might bridge the partisan divide in the U.S. His research focuses on understanding how institutions and elites influence the political behavior of ordinary citizens, including studies of mass polarization, the effects of partisan media, and various other topics. From 2014 until 2024, he served as a decision desk analyst for NBC News.
Matthew Levendusky is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and in the Department of Political Science in the School of Arts & Sciences.
(Image: Courtesy of Annenberg School for Communication)
His latest research projects include an analysis of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric; unpacking how attitudes toward courts and the judicial system broadly have become polarized and divided; and trying to better understand attention at this moment.
Levendusky has helped develop many of APPC’s surveys on Americans’ political knowledge and attitudes toward Congress and government. Among the findings, Levendusky says, is “the public’s trust in the U.S. Supreme Court has collapsed in the last 20 years. As a scholar, one of my most important roles is to accurately document what the public believes at any point in the time, both to advance our scholarly understanding, but to also be able to provide journalists and others with the ability to hold politicians to account.”
“When I started studying politics in the late 1990s, [politics] was a relatively boring topic,” Levendusky says. “Accurately documenting what we know about the political world is more important than ever now. But as I often tell my students, the future is not written—it is up to all of us to write it and produce the change we want to see.”
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