Most of my scholarly work has focused on American electoral politics, public opinion, and democratic theory. I have studied the dynamics of the presidential nominating process, the impact of voter ignorance on the outcomes of presidential elections, the resurgence of partisanship in American elections, and what's the matter with What's the Matter With Kansas?, among many other topics. I also have a series of recent papers (coauthored with Christopher Achen) exploring failures of democratic accountability arising from voters' myopia, wishful thinking, and predilection to blame incumbent officials for uncontrollable events such as droughts and shark attacks. For the past six years I have been examining the political causes and consequences of economic inequality in the contemporary U.S. That work is reported in Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, which will be published in 2008 by the Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press. Unequal Democracy documents substantial effects of partisan politics and policies on the economic fortunes of middle-class and (especially) poor people over the past half-century. It analyzes how Republicans have managed to win elections in spite of their generally poor economic performance. It provides detailed case studies of policies with important ramifications for economic inequality, including the Bush tax cuts and the erosion of the minimum wage. Finally, it shows that policy choices by elected officials reflect their own ideological convictions and the views of their affluent and middle-class constituents, but that the views of people with low incomes have no discernible impact on the policy choices of their elected representatives.