James Campbell

James Campbell is an expert on American politics and democracy, including electoral politics, public opinion, voting and campaigns — both presidential and congressional.

His research focuses mainly on American elections and mass politics. He is the author of five books and more than 80 journal articles and book chapters on American politics. His most recent book, “Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2016 (with an afterward in paperback in 2018) and was named as one of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles. His earlier book on “The American Campaign: U.S. Presidential Campaigns and the National Vote” was published by Texas A&M University Press in 2008 (second edition) and has been highly influential in understanding presidential elections.

He is recognized as a leader in the fields of elections, campaigns, and voting behavior; polarization and public opinion; American political parties; American political economy; congressional elections; and election forecasting. He developed several statistical election forecasting models that have produced highly accurate predictions of election results since they were first used in the early 1990s.

Beyond writing for academic publishers and journals, Campbell has authored a number of analysis pieces for news outlets and has been quoted in well over one hundred of them, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New York Post, The Economist, The BBC, The Times, and The Boston Globe.

Campbell’s empirically based research on the many varied aspects of American “macro-politics” and electoral change extends from the nineteenth century to the present.

James E. Campbell, PhD
UB Distinguished Professor of Political Science
University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences

• 716-645-8452
• jcampbel@buffalo.edu
• James Campbell's website