Honor Durham

Hi! My name is Honor Durham, and I am a Senior Research Support Associate (RSA) at the MIT Election Data + Science Lab. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2025 with degrees in political science and data science. My research interests lie in American and comparative politics with a primary focus on elections. I am fascinated by American elections (election administration and voter behavior), rural/urban divides in both the United States and United Kingdom, and democratic backsliding in modern democracies. Outside of political science, I enjoy podcasting, statistics, and R/Python. I plan on applying to graduate school (Political Science PhD!) during the 2026-2027 academic year with the goal of starting Fall 2027.

As an RSA at MEDSL, I am responsible for a variety of tasks, including data collection and cleaning, research assistance, and project management. Some of the lab projects that I have worked on include the Elections Performance Index and the 2024 Precinct Project. I have also been a part of MEDSL’s “Propositions Project,” which has involved collecting and extracting data from state voter guides for both on and off-cycle elections with a primary focus on more recent elections. I am also individually working on a project on local female candidate vote shares across different office types.

Being a part of the Department of Political Science at MIT has been a life changing experience. I have had the opportunity to attend department talks, audit graduate-level classes (Quant 1 and Comparative Field Seminar), and learn more about what it is like to do political science research full time. It has only furthered my determination to pursue a PhD in political science and to be a part of the political science academic community.

Please feel free to reach out to me at hdurham@mit.edu if you want to connect!