The David M. Howard Memorial Prize in American Politics recognizes outstanding achievement in graduate research in public policy, political behavior, or public opinion in the U.S. broadly understood.
Each year, IGS selects one UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate (who is ABD) to receive the award, which includes a cash prize of $2,000.
Jacqueline Colao is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines how electoral institutions shape congressional representation in the United States, the trade-offs involved in achieving representativeness, and the mechanisms through which these dynamics unfold.
Her dissertation investigates how voter knowledge, ideology, and party influence interact to shape vote choice in U.S. primary elections. She draws on original panel surveys that she designed and fielded in 45 congressional districts across the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, encompassing more than 37,000 respondents and 9,000 validated primary voters - the largest voter-level survey dataset on House primaries to date. Her findings show that primary voters are significantly more likely to support the candidate closest to them ideologically, despite the lack of party cues and challenging information environments that characterize primaries. This effect persists even when party organizations endorse a rival candidate, revealing an important degree of voter autonomy independent of elite influence.
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Howard Prize Fund
c/o Institute of Governmental Studies
109 Philosophy Hall # 2370
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2370
All donations to this fund are considered tax deductible charitable contributions under federal law.