About

Kirby Goidel is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University, where he also serves as Associate Department Head and Graduate Placement Director. His research is motivated by questions of democratic governance, including whether citizens are capable of participating effectively in democracy, the willingness and ability of elites to manipulate public opinion, and the institutional mechanisms that translate democratic inputs into policy outcomes. His most recent project investigates how the public understands democracy and how those understandings influence political processes and outcomes. Dr. Goidel has held several leadership roles, including serving as the director of the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University, the Scripps Howard Professor of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, and the founding director of LSU’s Public Policy Research Lab. He is the author of 'Democracy's Meanings: How the Public Understands Democracy and Why It Matters,' 'Misreading the Bill of Rights: Top Ten Myths Concerning Your Rights & Liberties,' and 'America’s Failing Experiment: How We The People Have Become the Problem.' Additionally, he has edited and contributed to 'Political Polling in a Digital Age: The Challenge of Measuring and Understanding Public Opinion.' Dr. Goidel currently serves as a co-editor of the Social Science Quarterly.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Family medicine
• Nursing
• Internal medicine
• Medical emergency
• Social psychology
• Geography
• Psychology
• Immunology
• Statistics
• Mathematics
• Political economy
• Law

Selected publications

• The prevalence and consequences of support for off-label Ozempic prescriptions

  Health Economics Policy and Law · 2025-01-07 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Ozempic and related semaglutide drugs represent a popular new strategy to address obesity in the United States, yet uptake of these medications has sparked opposition highlighting concerns about off-label drug use policies, drug safety, supply shortages and cost. Public attitudes towards off-label prescribing by physicians broadly, and towards Ozempic in particular, in light of this opposition are unclear. To better understand public sentiment on this topic, we analysed data from a representative survey of 3,420 US adults conducted from 13 to 22 June 2023. Public attitudes towards off-label prescribing were split, with 46.3 percent supporting physician discretion to prescribe off-label. Importantly though, 58 percent of respondents were at least somewhat concerned about Ozempic supply shortages caused by off-label use and 63 percent were concerned about Ozempic safety in the context of off-label use. Further analysis from an embedded survey experiment shows that rhetoric highlighting safety (but not supply) concerns surrounding off-label Ozempic prescribing is associated with a significant drop in support for off-label use. These results suggest that the introduction of obesity drugs like Ozempic present a pharmaceutical industry-led path for combatting obesity, but rhetoric opposing these drugs could blunt public support and uptake.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sorting It Out in the American States: Party Ideology and Mass Alignment

  Publius The Journal of Federalism · 2025-10-01

  articleSenior author

  Abstract While partisan cleavages in the United States are well documented, less is known about how the ideological positioning of state political parties shapes individual-level partisan sorting and issue alignment. This article examines whether citizens’ ideological and policy positions are influenced by the extremity of their own party and by the overall level of polarization between state parties. Using data from the Cooperative Election Study (2014–2020) merged with Shor–McCarty measures of state party ideology, we find that state party positioning matters for mass sorting. Individuals are more likely to align with their party’s issue stances when their own party is ideologically extreme, but greater polarization between state parties is associated with weaker issue alignment. These results highlight the asymmetric ways in which citizens respond to their partisan environments, demonstrating that state-level party positioning—not just national polarization—plays an independent role in shaping partisan sorting in the United States.

  PublisherDOI

• If I could turn back time: The authoritarian connection to nostalgia

  Research & Politics · 2025-04-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Comparative politics scholars have long noted the presence of authoritarian nostalgia in emerging democracies. In this paper, we explore how the combination of nostalgia and authoritarianism influenced public attitudes within the U.S. context. Specifically, we use a module from the Cooperative Election Study to explore the relationship between nostalgia and four measures of authoritarian attitudes. Our findings show that nostalgia has the expected relationship in all four models. Nostalgic Americans are more likely to support political strongmen, violations of rules, norms, and institutions, and the use of political violence against political opponents. This paper contributes to the literature on authoritarian nostalgia by establishing a link between nostalgia and authoritarianism in an established democracy without a recent authoritarian past.

  PublisherDOI

• Nativist Nation

  2025-06-26 · 1 citations

  bookSenior author

  This book presents nativism – the notion that foreign-born immigrants are not "real" Americans – as the leading ideological feature of American politics. Clifford Young and Kirby Goidel offer a rigorous and operational definition of nativism that, in combination with original survey data, explores public attitudes about who counts as an American. They explain the economic, demographic, and cultural circumstances that cause this condition to break through and demonstrate its distinguishing policy preferences. Not only do the authors define the US as a Nativist Nation historically, they also show how it has profoundly affected contemporary politics. Specifically, they look at the primary elections in 2015–2016, during which Donald Trump tapped into a wellspring of nativist sentiment and found a receptive audience thanks to bold rhetoric.

  PublisherDOI

• Yes to Koch, No to Woke: Public Opinion, Free Markets, and Business Involvement in Politics

  Public Opinion Quarterly · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract In this paper, we use data from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study to explore the relationship between partisanship, attitudes toward free markets, and corporate social responsibility. We find that while Republicans continue to express abstract support for free markets and business involvement in politics, they respond negatively to more specific descriptions of CEO activism, particularly when that activism is directed toward environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Overall, individual support for business involvement in politics depends on the noneconomic impact of corporate behavior. In this respect, our findings echo the literature on political tolerance: abstract support for free markets slips when applied to specific environmental, social, and governance contexts. Within this context, “business involvement in politics,” which Republicans support, translates into “corporate political activity,” which Republicans oppose.

  PublisherDOI

• Issue information

  Social Science Quarterly · 2024-01-01

  paratextOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Professional Partisans? Primary Care Physicians, State Governments, and COVID-19 Responsibility and Response

  State Politics & Policy Quarterly · 2024-01-08

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Emerging health crises challenge and overwhelm federal political systems (Greer et al. 2020, Global Public Health 15: 1413–6). Within the context of COVID-19, states and governors took charge in the absence of a coordinated federal response. The result was uneven policy responses and variance in health-related and economic outcomes. While existing research has explored public evaluations of state COVID-19 policies, we explore primary care physicians’ trust in state government for handling the pandemic, as well as their evaluations of their state government’s treatment responsibility for the pandemic and their state’s policy response. We find that general preferences for the role of the federal/state government in addressing the pandemic are shaped by individual-level physician partisanship. Specific evaluations of state policy responsiveness are influenced by whether physicians’ partisan preferences matched their governor. We also find, however, that Republican physicians were critical of Republican governors and physicians were less partisan than the general public. At least within public health, there are limits to the influence of partisan identity on expert (physician) political evaluations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Beyond party and the pocketbook: racial resentment, hostile sexism, and perceptions of corporate political activity

  Business and Politics · 2024-10-28 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract Recent controversies over “woke” businesses have challenged traditional partisan political alignments, leading to increased criticism on the right of corporate political activity. This paper explores how the public evaluates corporate political activity, focusing specifically on whether individuals believe corporations are doing too much (or too little) to advance social and political goals. We are especially interested in how social identities and pocketbook considerations shape perceptions of corporate political activities not explicitly tied to social issues. Does racial resentment, for example, influence perceptions of corporate political activity designed to increase worker wages or improve health care? Or are the effects limited to efforts to achieve racial equality? We find that racial resentment and hostile sexism have spillover effects, affecting perceptions of corporate political activity across issue areas. Partisan affiliation, political ideology, and personal pocketbook considerations, in contrast, play a more limited role. Previous research has demonstrated the effect of racial resentment and sexism on support for welfare policies. We add to this literature by showing that racist and sexist opposition extends to corporate political activities that might not be explicitly identified as socially progressive.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Nostalgia in Politics

  Public Opinion Quarterly · 2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  article

  Abstract Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to voters that, if elected, he would “make America great again.” Trump’s explicitly nostalgic appeal was rooted in the collective perception, shared by at least some voters, that life was better (and simpler) in the past. Nostalgic appeals have a long history in American politics. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) slogan was co-opted from Reagan’s “let’s make America great again.” Despite their long history, we suspect that, as nostalgic appeals have become central to the Republican Party’s messaging, nostalgia-susceptible voters have sorted into the Republican Party. Recently, scholars have attempted to better understand the political consequences of nostalgia on voting for populist parties, both in general and specifically for Donald Trump. We make three contributions to the literature. First, using an open-ended prompt, we consider more carefully what people mean when they say they long for the “good old days.” Second, we use these open-ended responses to inform our measurement of nostalgia and whether it reflects a longing for the past or pessimism about the future. In doing so, we show the importance of religiosity and media consumption (i.e., Fox News) as predictors of individual-level nostalgia. Third, we connect our measure of nostalgia to vote choice during the 2022 midterm election—demonstrating that the effects are broader than support for Donald Trump. Overall, we contend that if one is to fully understand contemporary politics, one needs to know how nostalgia influences political attitudes and behaviors.

  PublisherDOI

• Longing for the “Good Old Days” or longing for a racist and sexist past?

  Research & Politics · 2024-04-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Nostalgia plays an increasingly central and polarizing role in American politics, as the Republican Party has become the primary proprietor of nostalgic rhetoric. This paper explores how feelings of collective nostalgia in a country with an unjust past are inextricably tied to racism and hostile sexism. We expect that nostalgia is strongly related to racist and sexist attitudes. We test these expectations using data from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study. Our findings reveal a standard deviation increase in nostalgia is associated with a 7–13 percentage point increase in the probability of expressing racist attitudes, and a 6–9 percentage point increase in the probability of expressing sexist attitudes, even after controlling for partisan affiliation and ideology. These results suggest that nostalgic sentiments can exacerbate prejudice and discrimination by perpetuating the belief that things were better when America was more unjust.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Keith Gåddie

  Texas Christian University

  15 shared

• Todd Shields

  University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

  14 shared

• Ledric D. Sherman

  Texas A&M University

  14 shared

• Caroline D. Bergeron

  University of Ottawa

  13 shared

• Matthew Lee Smith

  Texas A&M University

  13 shared

• Nicholas T. Davis

  University of Alabama

  13 shared

• Tasmiah Nuzhath

  Harvard University

  11 shared

• Michael Climek

  Louisiana State University

  10 shared