Contact Information

University College London	E-mail: b.lauderdale@ucl.ac.uk
Department of Political Science	Webpage: benjaminlauderdale.net
29-31 Tavistock Square	Bluesky: @benlauderdale.bsky.social
London WC1H 9QU	Mastodon: @benlauderdale@mastodon.online

Appointments
– Academic

University College London

Professor, Department of Political Science 2019–
Head of Department, Department of Political Science 2021–2025

London School of Economics and Political Science

Visiting Professor, Department of Methodology, 2019–
Professor, Department of Methodology, 2018
Associate Professor, Department of Methodology, 2013–2018
Lecturer, Department of Methodology, 2011–2013

Harvard University

College Fellow, Department of Government, 2010–2011

– Non-Academic

YouGov

Senior Data Science Advisor, 2016–2021

Education

Princeton University

PhD, Politics, 2010
MA, Politics, 2007

Harvard University

AB, Physics, Magna Cum Laude, 2004

Books

1. Nick Vivyan, Benjamin E Lauderdale and Chris Hanretty. “Idiosyncratic Issue Opinion and Political Choice” Oxford University Press. 2025.

Articles

37. Markus Kollberg, Benjamin Lauderdale and Christopher Wratil. “Winning Votes and Changing Minds: Do Populist Arguments Affect Candidate Evaluations and Issue Preferences?” published online, British Journal of Political Science. 2025.

36. Dominik Hangartner, Benjamin Lauderdale and Judith Spirig. “Inferring Individual Preferences from Group Decisions: Judicial Preference Variation and Aggregation in Asylum Appeals” published online, British Journal of Political Science. 2025.

35. David E Broockman and Benjamin E Lauderdale. ““Moderates”” published online, American Political Science Review. 2025.

34. Benjamin E Lauderdale and Jack Blumenau. “Polarization over the Priority of Political Problems” American Journal of Political Science 70(2):503–521. 2026.

33. Jack Blumenau and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Very Similar Sets of Foundations When Comparing Moral Violations” American Political Science Review 119(2):746–762. 2025.

32. Noam Titelman and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “What is the effect of party labels with realistic candidate differentiation?” Political Science Research and Methods 13(3):591–610. 2025.

31. Lucy Barnes, Julia Romement and Benjamin Lauderdale. “Public Preferences over Changes to the Composition of Government Tax Revenue” British Journal of Political Science 54(4):1457–1467. 2024.

30. Jack Blumenau and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “The Variable Persuasiveness of Political Rhetoric” American Journal of Political Science 68(1):255–270. 2024.

29. Denise Baron, Benjamin E Lauderdale and Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington. “A leader who sees the world as I do: Voters prefer candidates whose statements reveal matching social psychological attitudes” Political Psychology 44(4):893–916. 2023.

28. Noam Titelman and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Can Citizens Guess How Other Citizens Voted Based on Demographic Characteristics?” Political Science Research and Methods 11(2):254–274. 2023.

27. Ginevra Floridi and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Pairwise Comparisons as a Scale Development Tool for Composite Measures” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series A 185(2):519–542. 2022.

26. Lucy Barnes, Jack Blumenau and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Measuring Attitudes towards Public Spending using a Multivariate Tax Summary Experiment” American Journal of Political Science 66(1):205–221. 2022.

25. Deborah Beim, Tom S Clark and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Republican-Majority Appellate Panels Increase Execution Rates for Capital Defendants” Journal of Politics 83(3):1163–1167. 2021.

24. Chris Hanretty, Benjamin E Lauderdale and Nick Vivyan. “A Choice-Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate” American Journal of Political Science 64(3):519–535. 2020.

23. Benjamin E Lauderdale, Jack Blumenau, Delia Bailey and Doug Rivers. “Model-Based Pre-Election Polling for National and Sub-National Outcomes in the US and UK” International Journal of Forecasting 36(2):399–413. 2020.

22. Benjamin E Lauderdale, Chris Hanretty and Nick Vivyan. “Decomposing Public Opinion Variation into Ideology, Idiosyncrasy and Instability” Journal of Politics 80(2):707–712. 2018.

21. Jack Blumenau and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste: Agenda Setting and Legislative Voting in Response to the EU Crisis” Journal of Politics 80(2):462–478. 2018.

20. Chris Hanretty, Benjamin E Lauderdale and Nick Vivyan. “Comparing Strategies for Estimating Constituency Opinion from National Survey Samples” Political Science Research and Methods 6(3):571–591. 2018.

19. Patrick Sturgis, Nick Baker, Mario Callegaro, Stephen Fisher, Jane Green, Will Jennings, Jouni Kuha, Benjamin Lauderdale and Patton Smith. “An assessment of the causes of the errors in the 2015 UK General Election opinion polls” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A 181(3):757–781. 2018.

18. Chris Hanretty, Benjamin E Lauderdale and Nick Vivyan. “Dyadic representation in a Westminster system” Legislative Studies Quarterly 42(2):235–267. 2017.

17. Benjamin E Lauderdale and Tom S Clark. “Estimating Vote-Specific Preferences from Roll-Call Data using Conditional Autoregressive Priors” Journal of Politics 78(4):1153–1169. 2016.

16. Kenneth Benoit, Drew Conway, Benjamin E Lauderdale, Michael Laver and Slava Mikhaylov. “Crowd-Sourced Text Analysis: Reproducible and Agile Production of Political Data” American Political Science Review 110(2):278–295. 2016.

15. Benjamin E Lauderdale and Alexander Herzog. “Measuring Political Positions from Legislative Speech” Political Analysis 24(3):374–394. 2016.

14. Andrew C Eggers and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Simulating Counterfactual Representation” Political Analysis 24(2):281–290. 2016.

13. Chris Hanretty, Benjamin E Lauderdale and Nick Vivyan. “Combining National and Constituency Polling for Forecasting” Electoral Studies 41:239–243. 2016.

12. Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Partisan Disagreements Arising from Rationalization of Common Information” Political Science Research and Methods 4(3):477–492. 2016.

11. Benjamin E Lauderdale and Drew A Linzer. “Under-performing, Over-performing, or Just Performing? The Limitations of Fundamentals-based Presidential Election Forecasting” International Journal of Forecasting 31(3):965–979. 2015.

10. Melody Crowder-Meyer and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “A Partisan Gap in the Supply of Female Potential Candidates in the United States” Research and Politics 1(1). 2014.

9. Benjamin E Lauderdale and Tom S Clark. “Scaling Politically Meaningful Dimensions Using Texts and Votes” American Journal of Political Science 58(3):754–771. 2014.

8. Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Does Inattention to Political Debate Explain the Polarization Gap Between the U.S Congress and Public?” Public Opinion Quarterly 77(S):2–23. 2013.

7. Benjamin E Lauderdale and Tom S Clark. “The Supreme Court’s Many Median Justices” American Political Science Review 106(4):847–866. 2012.

6. Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Compound Poisson-Gamma Regression Models for Dollar Outcomes that are Sometimes Zero” Political Analysis 20(3):387–399. 2012.

5. Tom S Clark and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “The Genealogy of Law” Political Analysis 20(3):329–350. 2012.

4. Cesar Zucco Jr and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Distinguishing Between Influences on Brazilian Legislative Behavior” Legislative Studies Quarterly 36(3):363–396. 2011.

3. Tom S Clark and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space” American Journal of Political Science 54(4):871–890. 2010.

2. Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Unpredictable Voters in Ideal Point Estimation” Political Analysis 18(2):151–171. 2010.

1. Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Pass the Pork: Measuring Shares in Bicameral Legislatures” Political Analysis 16(3):235–249. 2008.

Reports/Other

Alan Renwick, Ben Lauderdale and Meg Russell. “The Future of Democracy in the UK. Public Attitudes and Policy Responses” Final Report of the Democracy in the UK after Brexit Project. UCL Constitution Unit. November 2023.

Alan Renwick, Ben Lauderdale, Meg Russell and James Cleaver. “Public Preferences for Integrity and Accountability in Politics. Results of a Second Survey of the UK Population” Third Report of the Democracy in the UK after Brexit Project. UCL Constitution Unit. March 2023.

Alan Renwick, Ben Lauderdale, Meg Russell and James Cleaver. “What Kind of Democracy Do People Want? Results of a Survey of the UK Population” First Report of the Democracy in the UK after Brexit Project. UCL Constitution Unit. January 2022.

Patrick Sturgis, Nick Baker, Mario Callegaro, Stephen Fisher, Jane Green, Will Jennings, Jouni Kuha, Benjamin Lauderdale and Patton Smith. “Report of the Inquiry into the 2015 British general election opinion polls” London: Market Research Society and British Polling Council. 2016.

Oral (5 September 2017) and written evidence to UK House of Lords Select Committee on Political Polling and Digital Media

YouGov election polling models:

Co-developer (with Nick Vivyan and Chris Hanretty) of the electionforecast.co.uk website and forecasting engine for the 2015 UK General Election, used by BBC Newsnight and FiveThirtyEight.com.

Research Grants

Benjamin E Lauderdale (PI). European Research Council Advanced Grant. “CATNIP: Citizen Attitudes Towards National and International Problems”. €2,491,860. 2025–2030.

Alan Renwick (PI), Meg Russell and Benjamin E Lauderdale. UK Economic and Social Research Council. “Democracy in the UK after Brexit” £724,000 FEC. 2021–2022.

Benjamin E Lauderdale (PI). Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. “Inducing Partisan Disagreement About Political Facts.” 2011.

Benjamin E Lauderdale (PI). Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. “Does Congress Represent Public Opinion As It Is or As It Might Be?” 2010.

Tom S Clark (PI) and Benjamin E Lauderdale. US National Science Foundation SES-0961058. “Scaling Supreme Court Opinions.” $71,436. 2010.

Teaching

Voters, Public Opinion and Participation. 2021 (UCL PUBL0082, MSc)
Measurement in Data Science. 2019–2020 (UCL POLS0013, BSc)
Introduction to Quantitative Methods. 2019–2020 (UCL PUBL0055, MSc)
Fundamentals of Research Design for International Development. 2018 (LSE MY410, MSc)
Fundamentals of Social Science Research Design. 2011, 2014–2018 (LSE MY400, MSc)
Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Media and Communications (LSE MY464, MSc/PhD)
Applied Statistical Computing using R. 2016, 2018 (LSE MY454, MSc/PhD)
Introduction to Quantitative Analysis. 2011, 2014–2018 (LSE MY451, MSc)
Applied Regression Analysis. 2011–2014, 2017 (LSE MY452, MSc/PhD)
Special Topics in Quantitative Analysis. 2012–2015 (LSE MY459, MSc/PhD)
The Development of Political Beliefs. 2011 (Harvard Government 98pb, Undergraduate)
Democratic Theory and Practice. 2010 (Harvard Government 90bl, Undergraduate)

PhD Supervision

David Graham (secondary supervisor, UCL, expected 2027)
Michael Jacobs (primary supervisor, UCL, PhD 2025)
Markus Kollberg (primary supervisor, UCL, PhD 2023)
Noam Titelman (primary supervisor, LSE, PhD 2023)
Denise Baron (primary supervisor, LSE, PhD 2023)
Gabriel Gertsch (external supervisor & examiner, ETH Zurich, PhD 2021)
Ginevra Floridi (secondary supervisor, LSE, PhD 2019)
Judith Spirig (external supervisor & examiner, University of Zurich, PhD 2018)
Laura Bronner (secondary supervisor, LSE, PhD 2018)
Cohen Simpson (primary supervisor, LSE, PhD 2016)

Honors and Awards

Best Journal Article. 2013. Law and Courts Section, American Political Science Association.
Best Journal Article. 2011. Law and Courts Section, American Political Science Association.
Best Conference Paper. 2009. Law and Courts Section, American Political Science Association.
Best Poster. 2009. Society for Political Methodology Summer Conference.
Emerging Scholar Award. 2009. Midwest Political Science Association.

Professional Service

Editorial Board, Political Psychology, 2025–

Editorial Board, American Political Science Review, 2024–

Heinz Eulau Award Selection Committee, American Political Science Association, 2025

Associate Editor, American Political Science Review, 2016–2020

External Examiner, University College London Q-Step Centre, 2015–2018

Program Committee, Political Methodology Society Summer Meeting 2017

Methodology Section Chair, European Political Science Association General Conference 2014

Journal Reviewer: American Journal of Political Science; American Political Science Review; American Politics Research; British Journal of Political Science; Chapman Hall/CRC Press; Electoral Studies; International Journal of Forecasting; Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties; Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; Journal of Experimental Political Science; Journal of Law and Courts; Journal of Politics; Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series A; Legislative Studies Quarterly; Nature Human Behaviour; Party Politics; Perspectives on Politics; Political Analysis; Political Behavior; Political Psychology; Political Research Quarterly; Political Science Research and Methods; Proceedings of the National Academy of Science; Public Opinion Quarterly; Public Understanding of Science; Research and Politics; Review of Economics and Statistics; Sociological Methods and Research

Grant Application Reviewer: Economic and Social Research Council; Nuffield Foundation

University and Departmental Service

University College London, London, UK

REF 2029 Lead, UoA 19 (Department), 2025–.
Head of Department, 2021–2025.
School Promotions Committee (University), 2023 & 2025.
Student Number Planning Task and Finish Group (University), 2023.
Modified Contribution Model Design Team (University), 2022.
Director of Research (Department), 2020–21.
Deputy Director of Research (Department), 2019–2020.

London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

Classification Scheme Review Group (University), 2018.
Chair, Social Research Methods Sub-Board of Examiners (Department), 2017–2018.
Graduate Studies Sub-Committee (University), 2015–2018.
Doctoral Programme Director (Department), 2015–2017.
Deputy Head of Department (Department), LT 2015.
Teaching Committee Chair (Department), 2014–2017.
Pensions Advisory Group (University), 2014–2015.

Publications (Other Academic Fields)

Olivier Arnaiz, Nathalie Mathy, Céline Baudry, Sophie Malinsky, Jean-Marc Aury, Cyril Denby Wilkes, Olivier Garnier, Karine Labadie, Benjamin E Lauderdale, Anne Le Mouël, Antoine Marmignon, Mariusz Nowacki, Julie Poulain, Malgorzata Prajer, Patrick Wincker, Eric Meyer, Sandra Duharcourt, Laurent Duret, Mireille Bétermier and Linda Sperling. “The Paramecium Germline Genome Provides a Niche for Intragenic Parasitic DNA: Evolutionary Dynamics of Internal Eliminated Sequences” PLOS Genetics 8(10):e1002984. 2012.

John Komlos and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Falling Behind in an Opulent Economy: The Remarkable Stagnation of American Heights 1955-2000” Social Science Quarterly 88(2):283–305. 2007.

John Komlos and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “The Mysterious Relative Decline of American Heights in the Second Half of the 20th Century” Annals of Human Biology 43(2):206–215. 2007.

John Komlos and Benjamin E Lauderdale. “Spatial Correlates of U.S Heights and BMIs, 2002” Journal of Biosocial Science 39(1):59–78. 2007.

Matthias E Mobius, Benjamin E Lauderdale, Sidney R. Nagel and Heinrich M. Jaeger. “Brazil-nut Effect: Size Separation of Granular Particles” Nature 414:270. 2001.

Fernando X. Villarruel, Benjamin E Lauderdale, Daniel M. Mueth and Heinrich M. Jaeger. “Compaction of Rods: Relaxation and Ordering in Vibrated, Anisotropic Granular Material” Physical Review E 61(6):6914–6921. 2000.

Benjamin E Lauderdale