Ken Goldstein
Ken Goldstein is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project. Goldstein received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and combines his academic training with an ear for real politics and an impressive set of political contacts and experience.
He is the author of Interest Groups, Lobbying, and Participation in America, published by Cambridge University Press. His research on political advertising, turnout, campaign finance, survey methodology, Israeli politics, and presidential elections has also appeared in The American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Science, and Political Communication as well as in a series of book chapters. He is currently at work on a book project on television advertising and campaign finance, which is also under contract with Cambridge University Press.
In addition to his scholarly work, Goldstein has had extensive professional experience in conducting survey research for corporate, media, and political clients. Before attending graduate school, Goldstein worked as a researcher for the CBS News Election Unit and for the Charlie Rose show. Goldstein has worked as an election night consultant for CNN and CBS News. He is also currently a consultant for the ABC News political unit.
Goldstein's reputation for unbiased and non-partisan analysis has made him a favorite source of politicians and the news media alike. He is quoted extensively in the country's leading media sources.
Goldstein lives in Middleton, Wisconsin with his wife, Amanda, daughter, Samantha, son, Nathaniel, and yellow lab, Sunny.
Joel Rivlin
Joel Rivlin, the Wisconsin Advertising Project's deputy director, comes from Leeds, in the north of England. In 2000 Rivlin graduated from Oxford University (New College) with a bachelors degree in politics, philosophy and economics and having worked in both the U.S. Congress and British House of Commons. Following graduation, Rivlin moved into the world of political campaigning, working as a field coordinator and fundraiser on a nationally targeted congressional election in the Chicago suburbs and later returning home to the United Kingdom to manage a successful parliamentary campaign in the 2001 British general election.
Since the fall of 2001, Rivlin has been responsible for the creation, maintenance and primary analysis of the Wisconsin Advertising Project datasets.
Rivlin's research interests currently focus on the strategic use of negative advertising by candidates, parties and interest groups as well as other forms of targeting of messages to different voters in electoral campaigns.
Katherine Cramer Walsh
Katherine Cramer Walsh (B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison 1994, Ph.D. University of Michigan 2000) is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. Her primary research and teaching interests include public opinion, political communication, and civic engagement.
Her forthcoming book, Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life used participant observation and analysis of national sample survey data to investigate the way people clarify social identity and make sense of politics through casual interaction. Recent papers include an investigation of the perspectives women legislators use during floor debate in Congress, and an analysis of the effect of social class identity on orientations toward government (with M. Kent Jennings and Laura Stoker, forthcoming, British Journal of Political Science). In addition to her work on gender and campaign advertising with Virginia Sapiro, Kenneth Goldstein, and Patricia Strach, other current research includes a study of discussion groups as urban policy initiatives to improve race relations. She is currently a member of the American Political Science Association's Task Force on Civic Education and Civic Engagement.
Byron Shafer
Byron Shafer is Glenn B. and Cleone Orr Hawkins Chair of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has long used televised campaign ads in his teaching, first in video and then in digital form, and he has a large collection of historic ads, some of which provide the basis for the historic ads archive here.
Shafer is author of scholarly monographs on THE END OF SOUTHERN EXCEPTIONALISM: Class, Race, and Partisan Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming), with Richard Johnston; THE TWO MAJORITIES AND THE PUZZLE OF POSTWAR AMERICAN POLITICS (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, [forthcoming] 2003); THE TWO MAJORITIES: The Issue Context of Modern American Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), with William J.M. Claggett; BIFURCATED POLITICS: Evolution and Reform in the National Party Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); and QUIET REVOLUTION: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1983).
He is also the editor of, and author within, THE STATE OF AMERICAN POLITICS (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); CONTESTING DEMOCRACY: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775-2000 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), with Anthony J. Badger; PARTISAN APPROACHES To Postwar American Politics (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1998); PRESENT DISCONTENTS: American Politics in the Very Late Twentieth Century (Chatham; NJ: Chatham House, 1997); POSTWAR POLITICS IN THE G-7: Orders and Eras in Comparative Perspective (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996); THE END OF REALIGNMENT? Interpreting American Electoral Eras (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); and IS AMERICA DIFFERENT? A New Look at American Exceptionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
His current projects include PUBLIC WISHES: Issue Evolution, Policy Preferences, and Voting Behavior in Postwar American Politics, with William J.M. Claggett, and CULTURE, STUPID: A New Technique for Mapping the Political Landscape and the Picture of American Politics that Follows from It, with Richard H. Spady.
Before coming to the University of Wisconsin, Shafer was Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at Oxford University, where the beginnings of his campaign ad collection were acquired from visiting practitioners.
Sarah Niebler
Sarah Niebler is originally from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She received her bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College and her master’s degree from Lehigh University, during which time she was the Assistant Director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. In that capacity, she created, implemented and analyzed surveys fielded in northeastern Pennsylvania and throughout the state. During the 2004 presidential election, she coordinated a project that examined the public’s reaction to the first debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry in real time.
Following her graduation, Niebler worked briefly as an activist before joining the REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health) project in Nashville, Tennessee. There, she was responsible for evaluating public health projects aimed at reducing health disparities between African Americans and Caucasians. Niebler joined the Wisconsin Advertising Project team in 2008.
Matthew Holleque
Matthew Holleque is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and deputy director of the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project. He is jointly responsible for the creation, maintenance and analysis of the Wisconsin Advertising Project datasets. Matthew graduated from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with a bachelor’s degree in political science and earned a master’s degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006. His research interests include American politics, voting behavior, campaigns and elections, and political methodology.