GAIL MCELROY
Trinity College, Dublin
ABOUT ME
Professor in Political Science
Gail McElroy is a political scientist who specializes in the field of comparative politics. She is particularly interested in questions relating to the behaviour of political elites, the nature of public opinion and gender and politics. Some of her best-known earlier work relates to legislative organization in the European Parliament (EP). In more recent years she has developed a research agenda at the intersection of legislative politics, political institutions and voting behaviour.
Gail is a member of the Irish Electoral Commission’s National Election and Democracy Study Board and is the national coordinator for the Consortium of National Election Studies, the Comparative Candidate Study and the Monitoring Electoral Democracy project. She is a PI on the Irish National Election Study, the Irish Candidate Study and the academic lead on the general election exit poll. She has previously served as Head of Department (2013-2015), Head of School (2015-2019) and Dean of the Faculty (2019-2024).
RECENT PUBLISHED WORK
VOTER EXPECTATIONS OF GOVERNMENT FORMATION IN COALITION SYSTEMS
Can voters in multi-party systems predict which coalition will form the government with any degree of accuracy? We examine the relative effects of individual level attributes (e.g. education, cognitive mobilization) versus contextual factors ) in 19 German state elections and 3 German general elections between 2009 and 2017.
European Journal of Political Research (2022)
CAMPAIGNS AND THE SELECTION OF POLICY-SEEKING REPRESENTATIVES
Legislative Studies Quarterly 2020
Can voters learn meaningful information about candidates from their electoral campaigns? As with job market hiring, voters, like employers, cannot know the productivity of candidates, especially challengers, when they elect them. The real productivity of representatives only reveals itself after the election. We explore if the information revealed during the “hiring process” is a good signal of the legislative effort of elected representatives.
VOTER PREFERENCES AND PARTY LOYALTY UNDER CUMULATIVE VOTING
In this paper we examine what happens when cumulative voting is introduced in two German states. Even when we allow for tactical considerations, we find that the principle of unconstrained choice is not widely embraced by voters.
Electoral Studies 2018
In 2016 the Republic of Ireland joined over fifty countries worldwide in the adoption of candidate gender quotas. This sudden influx of a very large number of female nominees into the candidate pool offers us an excellent opportunity to definitively examine whether Irish voters are truly gender blind.In 2016 the Republic of Ireland joined over fifty countries worldwide in the adoption of candidate gender quotas.
2018
A Conservative Revolution? examines underlying voter attitudes in the Republic of Ireland in the period 2002-11. Drawing on three national election studies the book follows party system evolution and voter behaviour from boom to bust.
2017
Party competition in most industrialized democracies is defined in terms of a general left-right rivalry. But amongst established democracies, Ireland has traditionally been the odd one out. This chapter examines if the terms Left and Right are any more consequential to the Irish electorate in the 21st century and whether or not there is underlying ideological substance to their usage.
2017
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June 2019-2024
DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS, HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
July 2015 - May 2019
HEAD OF THE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PHILOSPHY
July 2013 - June 2015
HEAD OF THE DEPT. OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
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TRiSS, 5th Floor, Arts Block, Trinity College, Dublin
mcelroy(AT)tcd.ie
