Jesse Rhodes
Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the UMass Poll | University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA, UNITED STATES
Jesse Rhodes is a leading expert in social policy, voting rights, inequality, and political behavior.
Expertise (5)
Polls
Political Polling
Voting Rights
American Politics
Civil Rights
Biography
Jesse Rhodes is a leading expert in social policy, voting rights, inequality and political behavior. His research revolves around struggles over race, representation, and civil and voting rights, and their consequences for politics and policymaking in the United States.
He is co-director of the UMass Poll which combines cutting edge online polling with academic and professional expertise in the science of politics.
He has written extensively on inequality in representation, voting rights politics, education politics, economic, racial, and political inequality, presidential rhetoric, and party politics.
His new research, funded by the NSF, examines issue attention and legal consciousness in the LGBTQ+ community using a large corpus of articles from LGBTQ+ media.
Additional research examines the influence of racial attitudes on beliefs about the January 6 insurrection and perceptions of voting policies among whites; the impact of implicit racism on the behavior of state judges; and the influence of partisan bias on the behavior of jurors.
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Education (2)
University of Virginia: Ph.D., Politics
Juniata College: B.A., Politics
Links (4)
Select Recent Media Coverage (10)
Exploring the Impact of Voting Rights on Public Health
AJPH Podcast online
2024-06-27
Jesse Rhodes discusses the impact of voting rights on public health. “The federal government, particularly between the mid-1950s and 1965, made various efforts to try to empower African Americans in southern states to vote and those measures were essentially half measures and they were largely unsuccessful,” he says. “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a monumental act because it established really unique and distinctive legal and institutional features to protect voting in new ways.”
‘Lightning rod of attention’: Migrant crisis in Mass. highlights anti-immigrant sentiments and need for security
The Boston Globe print
2024-03-13
Jesse Rhodes comments about the security required to protect shelters housing migrants in Massachusetts. “In the context where immigrants have been consistently represented as a fundamental threat to the U.S., there are a huge amount of conspiracies theorizing around migrant centers and where people are being kept and are living,” Rhodes says. “That leads to security threats and people who are willing to do harm to these individuals.”
3 novel legal arguments by Republicans that threaten the Voting Rights Act in 2024
NPR
2024-01-06
Jesse Rhodes comments in an article about legal challenges to the Voting Rights Act by Republican officials, mainly in the South. “Conservative legal activist groups are trying out a variety of pretty radical claims that would have been beyond the pale 10, 15, 20 years ago. But now that there’s this very conservative majority, they think, ‘Why not? Let’s give it a shot.’ And they’re hoping that some of these sets of claims will stick,” Rhodes says.
California voters reject reparations in new poll but advocate sees silver lining: 'Policies are a solution'
Fox News online
2023-09-19
Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) who also helps conduct national surveys of public opinion, told FOX News Digital that he wasn’t surprised by the results of the poll.
UMass Poll: 60% of adults believe gender cannot be changed
MassLive online
2023-06-20
Jesse Rhodes, a UMass professor of political science and the co-director of the poll, said in a statement that the belief of the American majority that gender cannot be changed based on how a person identifies is “in contrast with available medical and social scientific evidence.”
UMass Amherst Poll: What is ‘Woke?’
WWLP online
2023-06-19
“Although most Americans seem fine about increasing the representation of diversity in television and film, there is a hard core of Americans – between 20-30% – who oppose this,” says Jesse Rhodes, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. “This likely reflects these Americans’ general anxiety about increasing racial and ethnic diversity in American society, and the growing influence of people of color in our politics.”
UMass Amherst poll: 42% of Americans support Juneteenth as a holiday
NHPR online
2023-06-19
Jesse Rhodes, a co-director of the poll and political science professor at UMass Amherst, noted that there is significant conflict among Americans on how history should be taught in schools. One contributing factor is the differing political stances, an element that manifests “a continuation and an intensification” of disagreement regarding racial history teaching, Rhodes said.
Polling shows why most Americans don't support reparations
Fox News tv
2023-05-22
In a video segment, University of Massachusetts Amherst professor, Jesse Rhodes, discusses his extensive polling on reparations.
UMass Amherst poll finds 71% of Republicans don't believe Biden was legitimately elected
WCVB-TV online
2022-01-06
"Republicans and conservatives are shifting blame away from (former president Donald) Trump, despite all the evidence, because it helps them maintain and protect deeply held identities and beliefs," said UMass political science professor Jesse Rhodes.
'Troubled, but not surprised,' professor says about Capitol riot poll
WCVB-TV tv
2022-01-06
A new UMass poll shares the sentiment about how Americans feel about the insurrection one year after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Joining us to discuss those results is political science professor Jesse Rhodes
Select Publications (6)
Yes, efforts to eliminate DEI programs are rooted in racism
The ConversationJesse Rhodes et al
2024-04-05
Jesse Rhodes and colleagues write that efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs in more than two dozen states are rooted in racism. Citing their research conducted through the UMass Poll, they say, “The troubling connection between racism and opposition to DEI programs highlights that there is still work to be done until the nation’s citizens are truly judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”
Politicians Should Know When to Retire | Opinion
NewsweekTatishe Nteta, Jesse Rhodes, and Adam Eichen
2023-08-07
"We should honor the contributions of older Americans serving in national elective office. And while we probably don't need to amend the Constitution to establish a maximum age of service, the fact that so many Americans support such an idea suggests that we need to have a national conversation about how to bring more youthfulness into our national politics. Doing so will help ensure that Americans of all ages enjoy fair representation in the halls of power."
Rooted in Racism? Race, Partisanship, Status Threat, and Public Opinion Toward Statehood for Washington, DC
Political Research Quarterly2023 In recent years, a number of prominent elected officials on both sides of the partisan divide have weighed in on the possibility of making Washington, D.C., the nation’s fifty-first state. While Democratic supporters of statehood for D.C. emphasize issues of equal representation, some Republican opponents have stressed the partisan and ideological consequences of D.C. statehood. Other Republican opponents, in justifying their position, have made the claim that Washington, D.C., lacks the necessary and sufficient characteristics associated with statehood, and these claims have been widely interpreted as implicitly racist appeals.
Americans just elected two lesbian governors. Have attitudes changed that much?
The Washington PostTatishe Nteta, Adam Eichen, Maddi Hertz, Ray La Raja, Jesse Rhodes and Alexander Theodoridis
2022-11-15
"The finding that antigay attitudes were not influencing Massachusetts voters surprised us. We wondered whether they resulted from our using what’s called a “feeling thermometer” to measure antigay attitudes; we speculated that it might be overly blunt and subject to social desirability bias, or the desire to give the socially approved answer. To further investigate, in the same survey, we used a technique known as a list experiment."
Just locker room talk? Explicit sexism and the impact of the Access Hollywood tape on electoral support for Donald Trump in 2016
Political Communication2020-05-23
Scholars have long debated whether and to what extent citizens punish political candidates for explicitly racist rhetoric. However, few studies explore whether a similar dynamic occurs when explicitly sexist messages are conveyed on the campaign trail. Do citizens recoil when exposed to explicitly sexist messages? To investigate this question, we exploit the unique opportunity afforded by the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Using data provided by the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and employing a variety of analytic approaches, we find consistent evidence that the release of the tape modestly, though significantly, reduced support for Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.
Ballot Blocked The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act
Book | Stanford University PressJesse H. Rhodes
2017-09-12
Ballot Blocked shows how the divergent trajectories of legislation, administration, and judicial interpretation in voting rights policymaking derive largely from efforts by conservative politicians to narrow the scope of federal enforcement while at the same time preserving their public reputations as supporters of racial equality and minority voting rights.
