Politics and Equal Participation Lab (PEPL)

Daniel Laurison

About the Lab

Our democracy is skewed towards those with the most resources and privilege. Low-incomeand working-class people of all races, and people of color across the class spectrum, vote at lower rates than richer white people. Professor Daniel Laurison’s Politics and Equal Participation Lab is dedicated to understanding and helping to solve class and racial inequality in political participation in the United States. 

We systematically collect and analyze interview, survey, and census data on both people who hold political power (such as elected officials and campaign professionals) and people from communities with relatively little political influence or engagement.  We have three main research projects:

  • The Missing Voices/Pennsylvania Participation Project is the biggest part of the Politics and Equal Participation Lab. We interview low-income and working-class people from around the state about their thoughts about and experiences with electoral politics. Our work is designed and carried out with the participation of people from low-income and working class families and communities. Our latest report is entitled The Political Disconnect: Working-Class and Low-Income People on What Politics Means to Them and How They Might Be Mobilized; another recent paper is in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies. 
     
  • The Race, Class, Geography and Voting project is a long-running project with Hana Brown and Ankit Rastogi. We look at how race, class, gender and place matter for who votes. We have published a series of papers (here, here, and here) Our current project explores the relationship between the race/ethnicity of a city’s mayor and the rates of voting in different racial groups in major cities across the US over the last 50 years. 
     
  • The Campaign Careers project is collecting information on every person who has worked on a Presidential campaign for either party, in the general or the primary elections. An earlier version of this database was featured in the book Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Privileged Few Shape Politics for All of Us and we are continuing to update it.

The research lab is supported by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility at Swarthmore College, and the Healthy, Equitable and Responsive Democracy (HEARD) [with link] Initiative. Past funders have included the Carnegie Corporation and the Social Science Research Council. and by Professor Laurison’s Carnegie Fellowship.

Lab Members

Post-Graduate Researchers

  • Ankit Rastogi, PhD
  • Bernie DiGregorio, West Virginia University (Sociology)
  • Chris Santizo-Malafronti '18
  • Claudia Alegre, University of California, Los Angeles (Political Science)
  • Elizabeth Zack, PhD
  • Kelly Diaz, PhD
  • Lydia Orr, Temple University (Sociology)
  • Rachel Broun, Stanford University (Anthropology)

Undergraduate Researchers

  • Brenda Mondragon '26
  • Chloe Lee '28
  • Danae Davis ‘27
  • Diana Olmos Mora ‘26
  • Shelby Destin ‘29
  • Kyyia Ford '27