Stephanie Ternullo

My first book, How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics (order from Princeton University Press), takes up one piece of this, showing how place intersects with race, class, and religion in shaping the rightward turn across the industrial Heartland. It draws on a comparative study of three White, postindustrial cities during the 2020 presidential election to show how local organizational contexts—particularly unions and churches—are shaping White voters’ turn toward the right in the American Heartland.

I am currently finishing a new book, under contract with Princeton University Press, about the divergence between local and national political behavior in affluent, liberal suburbs of knowledge economy cities. The book documents the combination of stasis in suburbs’ education and housing politics and change in their partisan voting behavior in recent decades, and shows how local organizations may be shifting the status quo of suburban politics for the first time.

In other research, I have examined how New Deal social policies reshaped political participation across different local contexts; how place reputation shaped gentrification processes in a Chicago neighborhood; and how redistricting into powerful wards in Chicago affects crime and city service provision.

My research has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Sociology, Studies in American Political Development, Social Forces, Perspectives on Politics, and Social Problems, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.