About

Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Pennsylvania State University, Eric Plutzer specializes in survey methodology and measurement, public opinion, voting, and participation; gender and politics; and education policy. He holds a Ph.D. from Washington University, obtained in 1987. His recent work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation. As a member of the Social Data Analytics program, he is involved in research that leverages social data to understand political and social phenomena.

Research topics

• Political science
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Mathematics education
• Computer science

Selected publications

• Governing During a Culture War: Religion and Local Government Officials’ Attitudes Toward Transgender Rights Policies in the United States

  Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · 2026-04-02

  article

  ABSTRACT As battles over transgender rights play out at the local level, this study offers the first large‐scale analysis of religion and U.S. local government officials’ views on key transgender rights policies. Drawing on our 2023 national probability sample of U.S. municipal, county, and school district officials, we examine officials’ attitudes toward policies related to restroom access and gender markers on driver's licenses. We find that religious affiliation, religiosity, biblical literalism, and Christian nationalism are significantly associated with officials’ opposition to transgender rights policies. Other attributes, such as party identification, age, gender, and sexual orientation, are also linked to officials’ policy views. Our findings underscore how certain religious affiliations, behaviors, and beliefs are associated with resistance to transgender rights in local communities, offering new insights into the relevance of religion to today's culture wars. The findings also hold implications for street‐level bureaucracy theory.

  PublisherDOI

• Confidence in elections among U.S. local officials: Effects of social trust, partisanship and political ambition

  PLoS ONE · 2025-06-25 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The U.S. public's confidence in elections is intensively studied in the last decade but little is known about election confidence among locally elected officials, whose roles and community status may influence public opinion. Using a nationally representative survey of local election officials, we compare election confidence among local elected officials with that of the general public. Local elected officials are more likely to trust both local and national elections. We theorize factors that affect local officials' trust in elections, including partisan context, state leadership election denial levels, and political ambition. We show how social trust, partisan identity, and ambition significantly influence local officials' confidence that local and national results reflect the intention of voters. We conclude by showing how the relative lack of intensive partisan polarization among local elected officials is especially important at keeping election distrust low among local officials.

  PublisherDOI

• Climate change education in U.S. middle schools: changes over five pivotal years

  Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education · 2024-06-25 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Climate change education is both important and challenging. Prior research suggests that many secondary school science teachers in the United States were conveying "mixed messages" to students that legitimized scientifically unwarranted explanations of recent global warming. In this paper, we focus on US climate education at the middle school level and assess whether teacher attention to recent global warming, and whether the messages conveyed to students, changed between 2014 and 2019. Pooling data from two nationally representative probability surveys of middle school science teachers, we show significant advances on several key criteria, but the prevalence of mixed messages remained high. Exploratory analysis suggests that improvements were spurred partly by the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards by many states and by partly by shifts in the personal views of science educators.

  PublisherDOI

• Scaled Paired Comparisons as an Alternative to Ratings and Rankings for Measuring Values

  Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology · 2024-07-22 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper introduces and assesses a method for estimating individual and group relative preferences of values. The method of scaled paired comparisons is introduced in the context of prior research on rating methods struggles to avoid nondifferentiation when rating sets of popular objects that constitute a value system. The method of scaled paired comparisons is introduced, along with a planned missing procedure that allows the method to be applied to large number of values. Using data from a survey experiment, the paper compares scaled paired comparisons with rating scales modeled on those used in the European Social Survey. This exploratory study finds that scaled paired comparisons require more time to complete but provide measures with greater reliability and higher construct validity than rating questions using identical question stems. While the particular example in this paper concerns liberal democracy, the method’s foundations lie in the study of terminal and instrumental values, and the method has the potential to improve measurement of those value systems and others such as post-materialism, child rearing, and more. More generally, it may be an attractive substitute for rating scales whenever the objects being rated are sufficiently popular (or unpopular) as to induce nondifferentiation and valid straightlining.

  PublisherDOI

• What’s effective and ineffective in preparing high school biology educators to teach evolution? Evidence from a representative national U.S. survey

  Evolution Education and Outreach · 2023-03-20 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract Background What types of coursework prepare biology teachers to teach evolution effectively? The present study provides answers to that question based on evidence from a nationally representative sample of public high school biology teachers in the U.S. Data about their pre-service coursework (in seven categories) and their attitudes and practices relevant to teaching evolution (in five categories relating to personal acceptance of evolution, perception of scientific consensus on evolution, instructional time devoted to evolution, classroom characterization of evolution and creationism, and emphasis on specific topics in teaching evolution) were collected. Results Coursework focused on evolution was significantly associated with positive outcomes: more class hours devoted to evolution, not presenting creationism as scientifically credible, and prioritizing common ancestry, human evolution, and the origin of life as topics of instruction, while shunning Biblical perspectives on the history of life. Similarly, coursework with some evolution content was significantly associated with positive outcomes: awareness of the scientific consensus on evolution, presenting evolution but not creationism as scientifically credible, and prioritizing common ancestry as a topic of instruction. But surprisingly, methods coursework on problem-based learning was significantly associated with negative outcomes: presenting creationism as well as evolution as scientifically credible and prioritizing Biblical perspectives on the history of life as a topic of instruction. Similarly, and likewise surprisingly, methods coursework on teaching controversial topics was associated with a negative outcome: presenting creationism as scientifically credible. Conclusion Consistent with previous work, the results of the present study suggest that pre-service coursework in evolution is important in preparing educators to teach evolution effectively. But they also suggest, surprisingly, that pre-service methods coursework aimed at preparing educators to teach evolution effectively tends, at present, to be counterproductive, leading to the presentation of creationism as scientifically credible.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reassessing the Effects of Emotions on Turnout

  The Journal of Politics · 2023-01-18 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Discrete emotions such as anger, pride, worry, and hopefulness have been shown to predict candidate preferences, issue attitudes, reports of participation other than voting, and stated intention to participate in various civic and electoral activities. Yet we know very little about how emotions might affect the most fundamental individual act in a democracy: turning out to vote. Using original survey data linked to past and future validated turnout to form four three-wave panels, we find that worry was a significant mobilizer of turnout in the 2018 midterm election, while enthusiasm was not. We also find that measures of discrete emotions have detectable impacts on turnout only when respondents are prompted to think about political stimuli. These results have implications for theory, measurement, and model specification that should inform future work on the effects of emotions on political participation generally.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Generations in contemporary US politics: statistical aggregations or collective political actors?

  Politics Groups and Identities · 2023-01-19 · 13 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  The cultural salience of generational categories is on the rise: the large and powerful Baby-Boom generation continues to dominate electoral politics while younger Millennials’ and Gen Zers’ fluency in digital communication technology lets them voice their frustrations. We demonstrate that these three generational groups show many signs of being—or becoming—collective political actors. Majorities identify with their generation, they find these identities salient in their everyday lives, and younger generations especially demonstrate high levels of generational linked fate. Generations have distinct political agendas, and many express a willingness to support candidates who prioritize the interests of their generation. These findings force us to reconsider the treatment of generations as only ascriptive groups and instead see them as composed of self-conscious members, capable of acting as collective actors on the political stage. If the patterns we show sharpen further, generations may become defining points of cultural and political cleavage.

  PublisherDOI

• Self-Appraisal of Masking Instrument

  PsycTESTS Dataset · 2022-01-01

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Self-Appraisal of Masking Instrument

  Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences · 2022-03-21 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract We explore mask-wearing behavior during the coronavirus pandemic using the Self-Appraisal of Masking Instrument (SAMI). We situate this survey-based instrument within a theory in which the decision to mask reflects social identity, an associated identity standard, and appraisals that generate feelings about oneself. Analyses of SAMI’s empirical properties reveal that masking-specific emotional reactions are distinct from emotional reports related to current events and politics (discriminant validity). We also uncover evidence of predictive validity: expressed feelings about masking predict future voting more than 6 months later. We recommend SAMI to researchers interested in studying mask resistance in an increasingly polarized political climate, and the intuition behind SAMI could prove useful in other research contexts in which health decisions reflect a conscious comparison to standards held by those who share an identity or will otherwise pass judgment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Religion‐State Interaction at the Local Level: Key Findings from a Survey of Religion and Local Elected Officials

  Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · 2021-12-09 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Relationships between religion and state are a core focus for social scientists, but little is known about a central set of actors in “church‐state” relations in the United States: local elected officials (mayors, town councilpersons, city commissioners). We report on a unique, representative survey of local elected officials, examining their religiosity, their interactions with religion through governance (prayers, meetings, symbol placement requests), and their preferences for religion‐state relations. Our results show that local elected officials are no more religious than the general adult public, that they interact with religion in their formal governance at low rates, and that a quarter strongly prefer increased state engagement with religion. Minority religious affiliation, Democratic political affiliation, and urban context predict opposition to religion‐state engagement. We describe how local elected officials may produce local regimes of religion‐state interaction that vary by geographic location and suggest pathways for future research.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness in Small Electorates: Institutions and Spending in American School Districts

  NSF · $225k · 2004–2007

Frequent coauthors

• Phyllis Silverstein

  The University of Texas at Austin

  81 shared

• Greg M. Shaw

  81 shared

• Michael W. Traugott

  State Street (United States)

  81 shared

• Travis N. Ridout

  Washington State University

  81 shared

• Tom Smith

  University of St Andrews

  81 shared

• Patricia Moy

  University of Washington

  81 shared

• Michael Berkman

  Pennsylvania State University

  30 shared

• John F. Zipp

  6 shared

Labs

• Social Data AnalyticsPI

Education

• Ph.D.

  Washington University in Saint Louis

  1986

• AB, Urban Studies

  Washington University

  1980