Zoltan Hajnal

Zoltan Hajnal will work on a series of articles and a book investigating whether changing the timing of local elections impacts policy and, ultimately, reduces economic inequality.  At different times over the past decade, six states have shifted from off-cycle local elections, where the only items on the ballot are local contests, to on-cycle local elections, which are held on the same day as federal contests. He will compare how policy shifts and economic trends in cities that adopted on-cycle election dates differ from cities that did not adopt on-cycle election dates over the same period.