Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)

Elections Research Center UW-Madison was listed as an official affiliate of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab as of 2025. ²

Activities

Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a policy and polling statistics research organization that specializes in the study of American election administration. It analyses national and state elections to inform scholarly work on the electoral process. It conducts its research with an eye toward election policies influenced by center-left preferences. It is housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ^{1 3}

The Center seeks to understand what factors influence the outcomes of elections and claims to derive from a longstanding tradition of such research at UW-Madison. It provides funds to support and foster graduate student summer research, faculty travel, media research, teaching resources, and a biennial symposium to present new studies to a wider audience. Undergraduate students are also eligible to receive funding for election-related research. ^{3 4}

In 2018, the Elections Research Center joined the MIT Election Data and Science Lab in co-hosting the Election Science, Reform, and Administration (ESRA) conference at the campus of UW-Madison. ESRA is an annual conference that invites academics, tech developers, and think tank staffers to share papers on alleged challenges that local election offices face. Speakers tend to focus on center-left topics such as “misinformation” about the election system, how to combat voters’ distrust of election officials, vote-by-mail, racism, gerrymandering, and ranked-choice voting experiments. ^{5 6}

In 2021, the Center produced a report on ranked-choice voting (RCV) and “final five voting,” including one on RCV’s effects on “communities of color.” ⁷

Affiliations

Elections Research Center UW-Madison was listed as an official affiliate of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL) as of 2025. MIT Election Data and Science Lab is an election and polling statistics center housed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It purports to apply “scientific principles” to the study of how elections are administered in the United States and aims to “improve the democratic experience” for American voters. MEDSL’s research areas tend to favor a center-left narrative of election administration, focusing on subjects such as “mail-in balloting,” “same-day registration,” and “redistricting.” ^{2 8}

Funding and Leadership

Elections Research Center at UW-Madison is partially funded by the Lyons Family Chair in Electoral Politics. ³

UW-Madison professor of political science Barry C. Burden was serving as the director of the Elections Research Center as of 2025. He was also the Lyons Family Chair in Electoral Politics, which allocates funds to the Center. Burden founded the Center and has an extensive research background in election administration as well as in congressional history, “Gender,” “Political Parties,” “Public Opinion,” and “Voting Behavior.” ^{9 10 11}

As of 2025, the Center had 19 academic faculty members affiliated with its research and operations. ⁹