Geoffrey Layman

Associate Professor
Department of Political Science

Degrees

B.A., Virginia Tech; Ph.D., Indiana University

Research Profile

Professor Layman specializes in political parties, public opinion, electoral behavior, and religion and politics. Layman’s first book, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics (Columbia, 2001), examines the growing division of the Democratic and Republican parties along religious and cultural lines. His current book project (with Thomas Carsey of the University of North Carolina) focuses on “conflict extension” in American party politics and assesses the impact of partisanship and party commitment on the policy attitudes of and polarization among the parties’ elites, activists, and mass identifiers. Layman also is involved in a variety of projects on religion and American political behavior, including one focusing on the way in which candidates’ religious orientations shape voter reactions to them and others focusing on Americans’ attitudes toward Muslims and the impact of those attitudes on electoral behavior. He has published numerous articles in the discipline’s leading journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and the Annual Review of Political Science.

Contact Information

445 Decio Faculty Hall
631-0379
glayman@nd.edu