Craig M. Burnett

Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Florida Atlantic University

I study how ordinary people make political decisions when the information available to them is thin — on ballot measures, in local and nonpartisan races, and in judicial elections that most voters encounter for the first time in the voting booth.

I am Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. Before coming to Boca Raton in 2025, I spent nine years at Hofstra University, where I was Associate Professor of Political Science, directed the Kalikow School’s poll program, and served a term as Associate Dean for Budget and Planning in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I have also taught at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and at Appalachian State University. I earned my Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, San Diego in 2010.

What I work on

Direct democracy. Much of my research asks what voters actually learn about ballot measures — from campaign spending, from endorsements, from the ballot language itself — and whether the educative promise of the initiative process holds up when tested. The answers are often less flattering to direct democracy than its defenders hope, and less damning than its critics assume.

Local and low-information elections. I have written on nonpartisan city councils, council-manager systems, ranked-choice voting and ballot exhaustion, potholes and retrospective voting, and party labels in judicial races. The common thread is institutional: the rules we use to structure a ballot shape the choices people are able to make.

Political knowledge. A related line of work asks whether political knowledge is a distinct thing at all, how well we measure it, and how survey mode changes what respondents appear to know.

Beyond the journals

I talk to reporters regularly — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Newsday, WCBS, and Governing, among others — and I give public talks on state, local, and national politics to civic groups who want the research without the jargon. I have provided expert testimony in court cases and public hearings on ranked-choice voting and direct democracy.

At Florida Atlantic I co-direct the PolCom Lab, which polls Florida and the nation, and I am building the Problem Solving Lab, a client-facing research studio where undergraduate teams answer real policy questions for local partners. Both take on outside work — if you have a question that needs an answer, write to me.

Elsewhere