Kevin DeLuca

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where I study American politics, elections, and the media. Much of my work is about candidate quality: whether the people who run for office differ in ways voters can detect, how much those differences shape election outcomes, and what role the media plays in making them visible or obscuring them. Related work asks how news coverage shapes public evaluations of politicians, and how electoral institutions can be redesigned to produce fairer outcomes.

I am a Resident Fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for the Study of American Politics (CSAP), both at Yale. During the 2025-2026 academic year I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at MIT and a Faculty Affiliate of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. Previously I was affiliated with the Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard, and I worked for the MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL) and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

I can be reached at kevin.deluca@yale.edu.

Presidential approval plotted against the tone of news coverage
News coverage and presidential approval move together. From work in progress on performance cues in news coverage.

Publications

6. Editor's Choice: Measuring Candidate Quality using Local Newspaper Endorsements Journal of Politics (2026) pub pdf
5. A Drag on the Ticket? Estimating Top-of-the-Ticket Effects on Down-Ballot Races (with Daniel Moskowitz and Benjamin Schneer) American Journal of Political Science (2025) pub pdf
4. A Partisan Solution to Partisan Gerrymandering: The Define-Combine Procedure (with Maxwell Palmer and Benjamin Schneer) Political Analysis 32(3): 295-310 (2024) Winner of the Society for Political Methodology Miller Prize for the best work appearing in Political Analysis in 2024 pub pdf
3. The Power of Characters: Evaluating Machine Learning Modified Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding Inference of Race in Redistricting (with John A. Curiel) State Politics & Policy Quarterly 24(3): 300-321 (2024) pub pdf
2. Validating the Applicability of Bayesian Inference with Surname and Geocoding to Congressional Redistricting (with John A. Curiel) Political Analysis 30(3): 465-471 (2023) pub pdf
1. American Election Results at the Precinct Level (with Samuel Balz et al.) Scientific Data 9: 651 (2022) pub pdf

Works in Progress

7. Local News in the Crosshairs: Audience Perceptions of Algorithmic News Sites (with David A. Beavers) (R&R, Political Communication) draft
6. Performance Cues in News Coverage Predict Presidential Approval and Election Outcomes (with Zoe Kava) (Working Paper) draft
5. The Influence of Biased Local Newspaper Endorsements (Working Paper) Presented at the 94th Annual Southern Political Science Association Meeting, January 2023. Honorable Mention for the Pi Sigma Alpha – Malcolm Jewell Award draft
4. Optimal Media Bias and Co-Partisan Accountability (In Progress)
3. Publicity-as-Lobbying: Newsies Little Merchants and Newspapers Fight for Labor Exemptions (In Progress)
2. Reverse Media Capture: Editorial Blackmail and the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 (with Andrew Beingessner and Marina Legoretta) (In Progress)
1. The Decline of Evening Newspapers: Partisan Slant's Impact on Election Results (with Tyler Simko, James M. Snyder Jr., and B.K. Song) (In Progress)