Michael Traugott

Research Professor, Center for Political Studies
Professor, Communication Studies
Adjunct Professor, Political Science

Professor Traugott studies the mass media and their impact on American politics. This includes research on the use of the media by candidates in their campaigns and its impact on voters, as well as the ways that campaigns are covered and the impact of this coverage on candidates. He has a particular interest in the use of surveys and polls and the way they are used to cover campaigns and elections.

Professor Traugott recently completed a revised fourth edition of The Voter's Guide to Election Polls, co-authored with Paul Lavrakas, and his co-edited volume with Wolfgang Donsbach, The Handbook of Public Opinion Research, was published by Sage. He recently completed a major study of the new voting technology funded by the National Science Foundation with a team of collaborators, and a book summarizing their results, The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot, was published by Brookings. He is currently completing a project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts looking at how the State of Michigan can adopt a post-election audit system. He continues to pursue research on how citizens are reacting to the new voting technology, including through survey-based experiments on reactions to different aspects of the technology as well as through a content analysis project looking at how election administration in the United States has been covered in the news since 1996. He is also part of the CPS team helping Qatar University develop a Social and Economic Survey Research Institute in Doha.

In Winter 2009, Traugott had a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and last August he served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Institute for Public Opinion Research in Hanoi, Vietnam. Professor Traugott is the Past President of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), serving on their Council and as an editor of their journal, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. He is guiding the organization toward a more active role in the nurturing of public opinion polling in developing countries, and he has participated in WAPOR seminars in Uruguay, Israel, India, Italy, and Switzerland. He is also serving on the Education Committee of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and was active in the design of an on-line course about polls for journalists who covered the 2008 elections, available on the News University web site of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida. He chaired an AAPOR committee that investigated the performance of the polls in the 2008 primary season.