Home » 

Zoltan Hajnal

hajnal.zoltan's picture

Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego

Department of Political Science
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093
(858) 822-5015

Expertise & Civic Involvements

Hajnal is a scholar of racial and ethnic politics, urban politics, immigration, and political behavior. Dr. Hajnal is the author of a range of books and articles on partisan politics, voter turnout, minority representation, and local spending. Hajnal has published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, and numerous other journals, edited volumes, and newspaper editorial pages. He has received numerous honors for his research and writing including the Best Book on Race Ethnicity, the Best Book on Urban Politics, and the Best Paper on Urban Politics (all from the American Political Science Association). He has received a number of fellowships including a Center for Comparative Immigration Studies Fellowship, a Center for the Study of Democratic Politics Fellowship, and a Chris and Warren Hellman Fellowship. His research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. Prior to taking his position at UCSD, he served as a Research Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and as a legislative assistant in Canadian Parliament.

SSN Briefs

SSN Spotlights

Key Publications

  • Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, and the Failure of Political Parties to Engage the Electorate (with Taeku Lee) (Princeton University Press, 2011).
    Offers the first encompassing account of how race and immigrant status affect the relationship that ordinary individuals have, or fail to have, with the American party system. Our analysis not only explains the high levels of ambivalence and uncertainty that shape the partisan views of so many individual Americans but also offers incentives and strategies for political parties and other interested observers to incorporate this population.
  • America’s Uneven Democracy: Turnout, Race, and Representation in City Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
    Demonstrates that low and uneven voter turnout leads to disadvantages for racial and ethnic minorities and proposes a practical and cost-effective solution to the problem.
  • "Who Loses in American Democracy: A Count of Votes Demonstrates the Limited Representation of African Americans" American Political Science Review 103, no. 3 (2009).
    Uses a new measure of minority representation and finds that across the range of American elections, African Americans are consistently more likely than other groups to end up losers raising questions about equity in American democracy.
  • Changing White Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
    Examines how experiences of constituency under black mayors affect individual white racial attitudes and the willingness of white voters to support black candidates; shows that black representation can profoundly alter white views and white votes by disproving the racial fears of many in the white community.

Media Contributions

Talks and Briefings

  • "The New Politics of Race: Immigrant Context and the Increasing Conservatism of White America," Center for US-Mexican Studies; Institute for Governmental Studies, UC-Berkeley; Princeton University; University of California-Davis; and Harvard University, 2008-2011.
  • "The Politics of Race in the 2008 Election," University of Washington, February 2009.
  • "The Consequences of Uneven Turnout in City Politics," Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, Princeton University; the Workshop on American Politics, Columbia University; the Politics Department Seminar Series, New York University; the University of Virginia Department of Political Science; the Workshop on American Politics, Rice University; and the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism, 2005-2008.
  • "The Missing Rainbow: Understanding Inter-Minority Cooperation in the Local Political Arena," Laboratory in Comparative Ethnic Processes Working Group, Princeton University, March 2006.
  • "Municipal Elections in California: Turnout, Timing, and Competition," (with Paul Lewis and Hugh Louch), Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, 2002.
  • "Finding Common Ground: Racial and Ethnic Attitudes in California," (with Mark Baldassare), Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, 2001.
  • "Are There Winners and Losers? Race, Ethnicity, and California’s Initiative Vote," (with Hugh Louch), Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, 2001.