Raquel Centeno
Public Opinion, Political Behavior, Identity Politics
Hi, my name is Raquel Centeno. I’m a Postdoctoral Teaching Scholar at the Caltech Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy studying how voters think and feel about parties and partisanship. I explore how these feelings are shaped by voters’ various group identities, particularly their racial and ethnic identity. I primarily work on American politics, and I am especially interested in subjects related to public opinion and political psychology.
My dissertation focused on the concept of affective partisan polarization and the role that racial and ethnic identity plays in how voters feel about their partisanship and other partisans. More broadly, my research touches on voting behavior, electoral systems, and intergroup relations. I tend to work with quantitative methods with a particular focus on surveys and experiments. I enjoy learning about these areas of methodology and take great pride in building an elegant Qualtrics survey flow.
I am fortunate to be the recipient of multiple grants for my research in this area, including receiving the Rapoport Family Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Grant. In 2022/2023, I was named an APSA Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior (EPOVB) Early Career Fellow. I have also benefited from doing collaborative research with practitioners to study the impacts of voting system reform on voter psychology.
Prior to Caltech, I completed my PhD in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California (2025). I completed my BA in Political Science at California Lutheran University in 2018. I have also been an instructor in American politics at Occidental College. Outside of academic work, I have served as a Research Associate at The Center for Election Science where I was able to apply my survey and experimental research skills to understanding how voters think about electoral systems and ballot initiatives. I also regularly engage in academic political polling, including doing work on the USC Schwarzenegger Institute’s California Issues Poll and the CSU Long Beach Center for Urban Politics and Policy’s California Elections and Policy Poll.
Outside academic work I enjoy cooking, going to farmer’s markets, exploring Los Angeles, and spending time with my cat Xochi.
If you are someone interested in political science as a field or wondering what graduate school is like, feel free to reach out to me via email! I’m always happy to chat.
Content: CC BY-SA Raquel Centeno 2025 (get source code). 
Theme: workshop-template-b by evanwill is built using Jekyll on GitHub Pages. The site is styled using Bootstrap.