Can Mutlu

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Economy and Government program at Harvard University. I use empirical methods and formal theory to study contemporary electoral politics and elite behavior, especially, in the Western European and the U.S. context.

I am also part of a group of researchers committed to digitizing Cast Vote Record data in the United States. In a set of papers, we use these data to test common place assumptions and hypothesis on voter behavior. These include the nationalization of American local politics, different ideological and partisan voter groups’ responsiveness to race level valence cues, voter rationale for abstention, and the validity of commonplace assumptions over voters’ political utility functions aiming to capture voting and abstention behavior of the voter.

I am currently a Graduate Affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), the Center for American Political Studies (CAPS), and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES). I am also a recipient of the Krupp Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship.

Prior to my PhD, I earned an M.Sc. in political economy and political science from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Economics from Haverford College.

My research has been published in Nature Scientific Data and the American Political Science Review.

PUBLICATIONS

Conevska, A., Hirano, S., Kuriwaki, S., Lewis, J. B., Mutlu, C., Snyder, J. M. (2026). How Partisan are U.S. Local Elections? Evidence from 2020 Cast Vote Records. American Political Science Review.

Kuriwaki, S., Reece, M., Baltz, S. et al. (2024). Cast vote records: A database of ballots from the 2020 U.S. Election. Nature Scientific Data, 11, 1304.

Conevska, Aleksandra, and Can Mutlu. Forthcoming. “When Do Voters Stop Caring? Estimating Key Features of Voter Utility Functions.” American Political Science Review. 

WORKING PAPERS

On the Rationale for Abstention: Partisan Defection Without Ticket Splitting. Job Market Paper

Ideology Party and Split Ticket Voting (with Aleksandra Conevska, Shigeo Hirano, and James M. Snyder, Jr.).  American Political Science Review, Review, Revise and Resubmit. Link

When to Unite, to Divide and Rule? Under Review. Link

When Are Parties ‘Good’ For The Environment? (with Aleksandra Conevska)

OTHER WORK

When to Reveal Military Capabilities? The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Link

Competition in the Shadow of Technology. The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Link

TEACHING

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Econ 2020b: Microeconomic Theory II, Teaching Fellow, Spring 2024

Gov 2005: Formal Political Theory, Teaching Fellow, Fall 2023

Gov 2006: Formal Models of Domestic Politics, Teaching Fellow, Spring 2023, (Awarded Certificate of Distinction in Teaching)

Gov 2005: Formal Political Theory, Teaching Fellow, Fall 2022, (Awarded Certificate of Distinction in Teaching)