Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (@dec-gr.bsky.social) | Political behaviour, public opinion and philosophy of social sciences
I am contractually obligated to tell you that I wrote a book and that it is out in February.
February is LGBTQ+ History Month - serendipitous timing for those who want to host an event for students and staff to mark the occasion of the month ;)
Call me, maybe.
www.therainbowvote.com 🏳️🌈🗳️
Just as Net Zero returns to the headlines in light of the decision to approve Jackdaw, I'm excited to speak this afternoon @sotonpolitics.bsky.social about why a popularly endorsed strategy to boost public support for policy action on climate change can't be as effective as its proponents make out.
We're excited to have @mbarnfield.bsky.social presenting work in our departmental seminar today on 'Why communicating consensus on climate change probably doesn’t increase support for climate action'. For some context, see his post outlining the evidence:
bsky.app/profile/mbar...
The first polls since the call do not seem to show it yet.
The party supply to the left of the PSOE is still unsettled, and today is the deadline to register coalitions. Deadline for candidates is in 10 days.
My hypothesis: it is hard to make up your mind about an option that does not exist yet
The party menu in the cases of Germany and UK was much more clear.
In this piece I also suggest how to read the coming weeks of polls without mistaking a potential calendar + party supply effect for a successful pre-campaign by any given party/coalition
The question: What happens to undecided voters when an election is called early?
What we found:
- In the UK, the share of undecided voters fell from 17.3% to 12.8% within days.
- In Germany, dropped by roughly 21% among voters with no party attachment. Among partisans, it did not move.
Moreover, in the run-up to elections held on schedule, we found no such comparable drops. So snap elections seem to pull the moment of decision forward!
But what about Spain then?
🎉 New article in @eupthejournal.bsky.social, co-authored with @tonirodon.bsky.social
The EU channelled billions to local governments through NextGeneration EU. Did the mayors who delivered it get rewarded at the ballot box?
Spoiler: No 🧵1/
You know those (rare) papers that really make you proud?
In new piece out at APR, we show that #AffectivePolarization likely spills onto other types of non-political polarization - notably, PREFERENCES FOR CATS VS. DOGS (aka “affective PAWlarization”)
paper: tinyurl.com/jn48bypp
data: osf.io/4p2zu
📢 We are hiring a pre-doctoral researcher to work on attitudes towards climate change at the Dept of Political Science at UAB:
🗓️ Deadline extended until 9th October!
❓ Please, spread the call and let me know if you have any question.
🌱 attclimate.net
📢 We're hiring!
Looking for a PhD candidate to join the ATTCLIMPOLS project on political attitudes & climate change, at the Dept. of Political Science, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 🌍
🗳️ Deadline for expressions of interest: Oct 2, 2026
📄 Info: uab-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/person...
New opinion piece with @profjanegreen.bsky.social in @financialtimes.com ⬇️📊
We argue that five parties in the polls doesn't mean five-way races. What's really going on is a scramble within each bloc over who can win, fought out seat by seat.
📢 Call for expressions of interest for a 4-years PhD position within my research project ‘Minority rights in an age of immigration: democracy, deservingness and elite influences’. ⏳ Deadline: 9 October.
Questions welcome!
Delighted to share that the project MINIM (Minority rights in an age of immigration: democracy, deservingness and elite influences) has been selected for funding by the Spanish Research Agency under its 2025 call for projects Generación de Conocimiento. 🎉 🧵
Back in Barcelona after a few intense weeks on the road presenting new research - ECPR in Krakow, @tact-forsed.bsky.social’s project meeting in Dundee and #EPOP2026 in Liverpool to round it up.
Met new people, saw friends, got great feedback and drank perhaps too much coffee (both good and bad)
Far right parties strategically increase the (descriptive) representation of women assuming it helps them win votes in general and, in particular, from women. Does it work?
In this short descriptive piece, I show the answer in the case of Reform UK is a clear ‘no’
doi.org/10.1332/2515...
I had fun writing the Last Word in the latest (penultimate, I believe) issue of Political Insight.
Read for free here: journals.sagepub.com/share/PUST6R...
tl;dr: Burnham must continue to take easy short-term wins and keep banging the drum about the long-term vision those short-term wins serve.
📣 Big news!
🗓️ Today, @tonirodon.bsky.social and I we are releasing the first version of the ATTCLIMATE panel dataset!
➡️ 4 waves of panel survey data (2023–2025) on citizens' attitudes toward climate change and support for mitigation policies.
🔗 attclimate.net
But the effects are not uniform. In GER, the uncertainty reduction is concentrated almost entirely among non-partisans. In the UK, the effect is broader across the electorate. So context matters and electoral system, competitiveness, and party standings shape who is most affected by the call.
Snap election calls reset the baseline of electoral uncertainty before the campaign even starts. This matters for polling, strategy, and democratic accountability. With snap elections becoming more and more frequent, understanding their distinct effects on voters is increasingly important. 🧵/end
Crucially, we show that this is qualitatively different from what happens in ordinary elections: Our tests against ordinary pre-election periods in Germany (2009–2021) and the UK (2015) show that the sharp drop in vote uncertainty we find after a snap call does NOT occur ahead of scheduled elections
We leverage two cases - Germany 2025 (unexpected) and the UK 2024 (semi-anticipated, and majoritarian system). Using a UESD design in GER and individual-level panel fixed effects in the UK, we find large and immediate uncertainty reductions in both: ~24% relative drop in GER, ~26% in the UK
1/ Happy to share our paper 'Still Instrumentally Inclusive' w/ @turnbulldugarte.com in @apsrjournal.bsky.social.
Understanding homonationalism remains important. Recent events (Berlin) have shown how quickly LGBT+ rights can become instrumentalized in debates about immigration and Islam.
#OpenAccess from @apsrjournal.bsky.social -
Still Instrumentally Inclusive - https://cup.org/4bhrhsp
"Do individuals in Western democracies shift their views on LGBT+ inclusion when exposed to opposition from Muslim out-groups?"
- @turnbulldugarte.com & @bertous.bsky.social#FirstView
Should immigrants be allowed to vote? This is a highly politically charged question. In a new research paper and substack piece, me and @tarekjaziri.bsky.social test the biggest objection to letting foreign residents vote locally, and find it doesn't hold up.
🧵
simonhix.substack.com/p/why-not-gi...
📝Last week we held a workshop to reflect on the future of our research group and discuss strategic priorities.
It was a great opportunity to share ideas, think together, and explore the direction we want to take in the coming years.
Thanks to everyone for the enthusiasm and participation.
If you work on public opinion and/or political behaviour you might want to consider submitting your abstract(s) to JCPOP 2026 in Barcelona - All the info 👇
🎉🎉 8th BANPS-JCPOP ANNUAL MEETING 2026! 🎉🎉
🚨CALL FOR PAPERS!
Submit your abstract 👉 tuit.cat/690ps
🏁You have time until 3 July, 2026
📅 19 November, 2026
📍UOC
More information on our website 👉 www.banps.cat/jcpop
Always chuffed to get a spot in one of the world's great papers, the @financialtimes.com, not least when I'm writing about something I really care about. But while I'm a long-term advocate for electoral reform, I do think we need to be realistic (and principled) about what, when and how.
Paying peer reviewers works.
Expanded Fast & Fair experiment @biologyopen.bsky.social:
• 5.5 vs 37.7 working days to decision with reviews
• ~3 vs ~9 reviewer invitations per manuscript
• no reduction in editor-assessed review quality
• similar acceptance rates
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
British politics is resembling the rest of Europe:
• Multi-party competition has replaced two-party dominance
• Challengers are on the rise, esp. the populist right
• Political realignment centres on identity politics (incl Brexit)
But FPTP is poorly suited to this fragmentation
🏴 New Blog 🏴
The Senedd election is just over a week away, and the polls suggest Labour might lose in Wales for the first time in a over century!
So, I've written a quick overview on the blocs structuring Welsh politics, and what people think of Labour:
blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/thinking-wal...
Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met.
But we're still studying social media like it's 2010.
We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up.
osf.io/preprints/so...
preprint w/ Richard Rogers
The DEC research group is now welcoming expressions of interest for Marie Curie postdocs. If you are interested in joining a stimulating and healthy environment I'm happy to chat about research avenues, group activities, and what it's actually like to work here!
Feel free to repost and DM me :)
📢Open call for applications.
DEC welcomes expressions of interest for the 2026 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships.
Applicants interested in developing a proposal with us are encouraged to get in touch before 15 May.
More information ⬇️
marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/post...
I just published something on my Substack about one reason, among many, why I don't think communicating public consensus on climate change is anything like as powerful a climate policy tool as people make it out to be.
open.substack.com/pub/drmatthe...
Probably the most talented early-career political scientist out there just became a doctor!
If you have a project, budget, or call for applications that suits her profile, you’d be wise to reach out to her.
Do it and thank me later 😉
So pleased to share that I passed my viva yesterday 🎓✨
What a journey these past years have been! I’m happy, proud, and undeniably also quite relieved to have wrapped this up now.
Now on to discovering what new challenges the world of political science has in store! 📚📊
“Plaid Cymru remain in the strongest position - Reform faces far greater constraints, yet there should be no mistake: winning a third of seats would represent a remarkable result.” - @jaclarner.bsky.social#Senedd26#Wales#Cymruwww.itv.com/news/wales/2...
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📊 How powerful are polls in influencing election outcomes?
🗳️ @krausewe.bsky.social & @christinagahn.bsky.social examine how election polls can shape voter behaviour, from bandwagon effects to strategic voting, and why their influence is more complex than it first appears 🤔
"Just because you can turn to AI at a moment’s notice doesn’t mean you should. There is something to be said for planning ahead before interacting with the AI, and for blocking out time without it — leaving space for the human in the loop to stop, to reflect [...]" giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
🌀
👣 @alinavranceanu.bsky.social & @bpetrova.bsky.social show that in Western Europe, generous #welfare systems – perhaps counterintuitively – make natives more favourably inclined toward #immigrants.
💸Indeed, cutting benefits risks exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment
👇🏾
Still controlling for gender without thinking about why? You can cite me💚👩🔬💚
I show that the gender gap in progressive climate and environmental views is a persistent empirical regularity that cannot be explained by differences in socioeconomic background, political ideology, or risk aversion.
🚨 Upcoming: "When Events Change Samples: Disentangling Causal Effects from Compositional Bias in Quasi-Experimental Designs"
👤 Klara Müller (University of Mannheim)
🗓️ Wed, February 25, 13:45-15:15 CET
📺 Register for the live stream: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...