About

David Macdonald is an Assistant Professor of American Politics and the RSP Coordinator at the University of Florida's Department of Political Science. He received his Ph.D. from Florida State University in 2020, and his academic background includes a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Central Florida, obtained in 2011 and 2013 respectively. His research and teaching interests focus on U.S. public opinion and political behavior, with a particular emphasis on understanding why ordinary people support certain policies, parties, and candidates. He is planning a book project that examines the mass-level partisan consequences of labor unions in the United States. Additionally, his research explores the political causes and consequences of political trust, immigration attitudes, core values, and economic inequality.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Political economy
• Law
• Development economics
• Economics
• Psychology
• Demographic economics
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Political Trust and Support for Immigration in the European Mass Public

  Political Behavior · 2021 · 13 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  DOI

• Labor Unions and White Democratic Partisanship

  Political Behavior · 2020 · 16 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  DOI

• Political Trust and Support for Immigration in the American Mass Public

  British Journal of Political Science · 2020 · 46 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Abstract Immigration is one of the most salient and important issues in contemporary American politics. While a great deal is known about how cultural attitudes and economics influence public opinion toward immigration, little is known about how attitudes toward government influence support for immigration. Using cross-sectional data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), panel data from the ANES and General Social Survey, as well a Mechanical Turk (MTurk) survey experiment, I show that political trust exerts a positive and substantively meaningful influence on Americans' support for immigration. Politically trustful individuals, both Democrats and Republicans, are more supportive of pro-immigration policies. These findings underscore the political relevance of trust in government and show that public attitudes toward immigration are not driven solely by feelings about immigrant groups, partisanship, core political values, nor personality traits, but are also affected by trust in government, the actor most responsible for managing immigration policy.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Teresa Cornacchione

  2 shared

• L. A. B.

  1 shared

• Karen Anne Jeffers

  Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation

  1 shared

• Leo Dillon

  1 shared

• Jonathan Crush

  1 shared

• Susan M. Cheyne

  International Union for Conservation of Nature

  1 shared

• Graham McFarlane

  1 shared

• Lynn Pallemaerts

  Lund University

  1 shared

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