Media Mentions
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USA Today
These politicians love talking about religion. They're also Democrats
August 25, 2026
Democrats' coalition of voters tends to be the most religiously diverse, but also the most secular, said David Campbell, director of the University of Notre Dame Democracy Initiative.
Mentions
Political Science
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Congress’ wide age gap comes into focus
August 24, 2026
“Voters have these attitudes that they don’t want older members. But then when these older members run, especially incumbents run, they tend to put them back in power,” said James M. Curry, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Voters are the stopgap.”
Mentions
Political Science
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The Washington Post
A ‘nonbeliever’ in Congress argues new view of religion is gaining ground on the Hill
August 21, 2026
University of Notre Dame political scientist David Campbell said Huffman is probably right that secularism’s impact in the U.S. is growing. He called the change “one of the most significant developments in American society in the last generation.”
Mentions
Political Science
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ABC News
Some Democrats trying to reclaim the issue of faith from the Republican Party
August 17, 2026
David Campbell, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame, told ABC News that Carter ran on describing himself "as a born-again or evangelical Christian, and no presidential candidate had ever done that before."
Mentions
Political Science
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Time
Is There a ‘Religious Revival’ Happening Among Gen Z?
August 14, 2026
“I would not say that the evidence [of a revival] has been convincing, but there are hints in the data,” says David Campbell, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. “It’s entirely possible that the anecdotal reports are a leading indicator—so one possibility is three years from now, we’ll be having this conversation and say yeah, it turns out there really was a religious revival; it just takes a while to show up in the data.”
Mentions
Political Science
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The Conversation
Why ‘democratic neutrality’ is an overlooked threat to American democracy
July 28, 2026
By Matthew Hall, Professor of Constitutional Studies, Political Science and Law, University of Notre Dame; Brittany Solomon, Assistant Professor of Administrative Leadership Management and Organization, University of Notre Dame; and Tyler Leigh, Research Fellow, Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, University of Notre Dame.
Mentions
Political Science
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The Christian Science Monitor
Why faith matters in today’s political memoirs
July 27, 2026
This moment may have a parallel in 2000, when George W. Bush ran as the candidate who would restore morality to the White House following the scandal of Bill Clinton’s affair, says David Campbell, professor of American democracy at the University of Notre Dame.
Mentions
Political Science
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Nuns Sue New York & “Major Military Punishment” Promised from Trump
July 24, 2026
President Trump promises “major military punishment” after Iran-backed militants target tankers in the Red Sea as the House passes a major defense budget, oil is spiking past 100 dollars a barrel while unemployment reaches a decades-long low, and a new “aid in dying” law in New York has prompted a lawsuit from more than 10 Catholic organizations. We speak with Steve Yates, a national security expert at Heritage, Notre Dame Professor of Economics Jeffrey Campbell, & Jim Campbell from Alliance Defending Freedom.
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Time
Religion’s Longstanding Gender Gap Is Narrowing Among Gen Z. But Which Gender Is Narrowing It—and Why?
July 13, 2026
Gallup did also ask about attendance at religious services, and found that the share of young men who say they attend religious services at least once a month increased by seven percentage points in the span of two years, making them statistically tied in that metric with their female counterparts in the poll’s findings. But David Campbell, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, points out that other surveys that measure weekly attendance haven’t shown the same spike among young men.
Mentions
Political Science
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U.S. News & World Report
Think You Can’t Afford to Retire? You Might Be Missing Two Massive Piles of Money
July 06, 2026
“People have a lot of doom and gloom about Social Security, but I don’t,” says Jeffrey Campbell, an economics professor at the University of Notre Dame. He believes much of the talk about the program running out of money is overblown and doesn’t think older Americans should worry about Social Security benefits being reduced. That’s good news for retirees who stand to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from the program.
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Vance gives Catholic converts a bigger stage
June 16, 2026
"I would say this is more of religious resilience rather than a religious revival," David Campbell, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, tells Axios.
Mentions
Political Science
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Vox
How the Pentagon picked a fight with Mormons
June 10, 2026
“It’s not like those theological concerns about Mormonism disappeared in 2012, but by the time we got to 2012, the issue wasn’t Romney’s Mormonism anymore,” David Campbell, a professor of American politics and religion at the University of Notre Dame, told me. “And so a lot of members of the LDS church thought, well, this issue’s over now.”
Mentions
Political Science
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Chicago Tribune
OPINION | Professors: The overlooked threat of democratic neutrality in America
June 08, 2026
By Matthew E.K. Hall, professor of constitutional studies and the director of the Rooney Democracy Institute at the University of Notre Dame; B. Tyler Leigh, a research fellow at the Rooney Democracy Institute; and Brittany C. Solomon, associate professor of Management & Organization at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
Mentions
Political Science
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The New York Times
James Talarico Isn’t the Only One
June 08, 2026
“The Black church has been such a cornerstone for the Democratic Party for such a long time,” David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame, told me at an Aspen Institute conference, “that we’ve become very accustomed to African American candidates using religious language, Jesse Jackson perhaps being the most notable example of that. We’re not as used to hearing white clergy in particular running on the Democratic side.”
Mentions
Political Science
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Roughly half of Americans hold a ‘neutral’ stance toward democracy
May 19, 2026
The study, led by Matthew E. K. Hall alongside B. Tyler Leigh and Brittany C. Solomon, analyzed responses from more than 45,000 voting-age Americans. Its conclusion lands with a force that is easy to underestimate: democratic neutrality is not harmless indecision. It is a condition that behaves, in elections, much like outright support for undemocratic conduct.
Mentions
Political Science
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South Bend Tribune
Notre Dame researches American democracy and the threat of neutrality
May 12, 2026
Roughly half of the United States' population expresses neutrality toward one or more undemocratic practices, a trend that researchers at the University of Notre Dame argue in a new study is an overlooked threat to American democracy. The 2026 study, titled “The overlooked threat of democratic neutrality in the USA,” by Matthew E. K. Hall, B. Tyler Leigh and Brittany C. Solomon explores democratic neutrality as prevalent and distinct from opposition to undemocratic practices, reflective of meaningful attitudes, correlated with theoretically related constructs and as "consequential as outright support for undemocratic practices in shaping preferences for anti-democratic candidates.”
Mentions
Political Science
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What Vance’s criticisms of the pope reveal about religion in America
May 11, 2026
For Notre Dame’s David Campbell, a political scientist focused on the role of religion in American democracy, the rebuke — one Vance has since doubled down on — is at once stunning and predictable. Stunning, Campbell said, given “the defining characteristic of Catholicism — the reason Martin Luther split from the church — is the role of the pope” as the preeminent source of God’s word.
Mentions
Political Science
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Anne Millbrooke: We must take a stand, because neutrality helps the oppressor
May 04, 2026
Matthew E.K. Hall, B. Tyler Leigh, and Brittany C. Solomon published their research under the title “The Overlooked Threat of Democratic Neutrality in the USA” in the prestigious journal Nature Human Behaviour. The problem, as they defined it, is half of us don’t support or oppose undemocratic measures. Half are neutral. By being neutral, a person can become complicit in undemocratic practices such as censoring media outlets, denying election results, and jailing people without due process of the law set by democratic process.
Mentions
Political Science
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The Fallout From Trump’s Pope Bashing
April 30, 2026
David E. Campbell of the University of Notre Dame is doubtful about dramatic effects from Trump’s tussle with the Holy See. A professor of American Democracy and director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative, he said: “There’s no reason to expect that it will have any effect on midterms. Trump is not on the ballot, and it’s a long way from now to November.”
Mentions
Political Science
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The Guardian
The supreme court’s voting rights decision is a death knell for American democracy
April 30, 2026
Political scientists such as the University of Notre Dame’s Christina Wolbrecht have argued that America wasn’t really a democracy, not in the meaningful sense of the term, until the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the law that formed the signature achievement of the civil rights movement and sought to end racial barriers to voting across the south when it was passed in 1965.
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Political Science