Christopher Weber

Christopher Weber

Political psychology · behavior · voter files

I am a Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, where I direct The Arizona Voter Project. I received my Ph.D. in political science from Stony Brook University in 2008.

My research sits at the intersection of political psychology and political behavior, with a focus on American political campaigns, ideology, and authoritarianism. I also work extensively in political methodology — experimental design, measurement, and, increasingly, the data science of large voter files. My work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, and elsewhere.

Career highlights

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Latest updates

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The Arizona Voter Project data modules are open in beta — party transitions, registration and turnout histories, precinct analytics, and a voter-file explorer. Figures are preliminary and will migrate to the official project site.

The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate, with Christopher M. Federico and Stanley Feldman, is out with Oxford University Press in the Series in Political Psychology.

Selected publications

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The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate

Christopher M. Federico, Stanley Feldman, Christopher Weber,
Series in Political Psychology • 2026
Abstract
The Authoritarian Divide shows how authoritarian predispositions — desires for social and in-group conformity — have increasingly structured American political preferences, voting, and partisanship over recent decades. Drawing on nationally representative samples, panel data, and experiments, the authors trace how voters have sorted into parties by their levels of authoritarianism (higher toward the Republican Party, lower toward the Democratic), revealing complexities including the outsized effect on White Americans, dependence on the choices parties offer, and the role of education. The analysis carries crucial implications for partisan conflict and the future of American democracy. (Editorial summary — not the published abstract.)
Political Psychology Authoritarianism Partisanship

Authoritarianism and Political Conflict

Stanley Feldman, Christopher Weber,
The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology • 2024
Abstract
We review recent research on authoritarianism with the goal of addressing major issues of conceptualization, measurement, and political consequences. We highlight a conceptualization of authoritarianism that identifies the desire for social cohesion and defense of ingroup norms as central to its dynamics. The consequences of authoritarianism—intolerance of dissent, out-group animosity, and support for anti-democratic leaders and parties—result from the experience of threat to social cohesion among those with authoritarian predispositions. Threats may be associated with processes of social change (changing gender norms) or changes to the status of the majority group from immigration. The role of threat helps provide a basis for understanding the conditions under which authoritarianism becomes a politically potent force.
Political Psychology Authoritarianism

Why Are We Divided? Understanding the Social and Ideological Foundations of Partisan Sorting and Polarization

Christopher Weber, Samara Klar,
Advances in Political Psychology • 2019
Abstract
Americans are sorting ideologically: liberals and conservatives are more likely to respectively identify as Democrats and Republicans. They are sorting socially as well: partisans like and trust copartisans more than opposing partisans. Existing explanations rely on exogenous factors such as elite polarization, but these cannot fully explain variation in sorting. We argue that psychological characteristics help explain the tendency to sort ideologically or socially—specifically, an individual's responsiveness to internal values versus normative social pressures. Testing this with several nationally representative surveys and a survey experiment, we find strong support that a person's own tendency to respond to social cues, as opposed to ideological values, has important consequences for this process.
Political Psychology Polarization Partisanship

Services
  • ISPP Governing Council (2025–)
  • Co-Editor, Political Psychology (2020–2024)
  • Director, ISPP Summer Academy (2015–2020)
  • Director, The Arizona Voter Project (2020–)
  • Co-Coordinator, Arizona Policy Lab (2020–)
  • Director of Doctoral Studies, School of Government and Public Policy (2018–2021)
  • University of Arizona Institutional Review Board (2016–)

Miscellaneous

Honors, awards, and grants

  • Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona (2024)
  • Google Cloud Champion Innovator, Development Expert (2023–)
  • $600,000 University of Arizona RII Grant — The Arizona Voter Project
  • Udall Center Fellowship, University of Arizona — course release for Change and Resistance
  • Douglas L. Manship, Sr. Professorship, LSU (2011–2013)
  • Manship School Seed Grant (Co-PI): Media Coverage of Female Political Candidates (2010–2011)

Recent media