Event Time
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Noon to 1:15 PM
Open to the Yale community and invited scholars.
Location
Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Room A002
77 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Speaker
Rachel Porter, Notre Dame du Lac Assistant Professor of Political Science
Description
American Poltics & Public Policy Workshop
Abstract
Bipartisan cooperation is crucial for congressional productivity and democratic legitimacy, yet bipartisan campaign rhetoric is often dismissed as an electioneering tactic. If these appeals are simply “cheap talk,” they reveal little about how candidates will govern, weakening the representational link between campaigning and lawmaking. We argue instead that campaign messages do credibly signal bipartisan intent, but that bipartisan lawmaking is concentrated in policy areas where candidates make bipartisan appeals. To test this theory of selective bipartisan lawmaking, we link policy-specific bipartisan campaign messages from U.S. House candidates (N=43,465; 2018–2022) to sponsorship and cosponsorship of related bills in the 116th-18th Congresses. We demonstrate that candidates who highlight bipartisan cooperation in specific policy areas while campaigning are more likely to engage in meaningful cross-party policymaking once in office and achieve greater legislative success in those same domains. Our findings clarify the policy-specific structure of bipartisan lawmaking in a polarized era.
Biography
Rachel Porter is the Notre Dame du Lac Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, a faculty fellow with the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society, and co-director of the Representation and Politics in Legislatures Lab. Her research examines the U.S. Congress, congressional elections, and campaign finance using original data collections and computational methods. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2022, where her dissertation received APSA’s E.E. Schattschneider Award. Her work is published in the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.