Articles by Alberto López Ortega

June 11, 2025

How hard is it to find a date when you vote radical right?

Alberto López Ortega

Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte and Alberto López Ortega explore what our dating choices reveal about democracy. While liberal circles assume radical-right supporters are socially shunned, experimental evidence shows the opposite. Normalisation, not exclusion, reigns — and that’s a warning sign for anyone concerned about the erosion of democratic norms

Alberto López Ortega

Ramón Areces Fellow, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University / Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

From July 2025, Alberto will develop his VENI project (2025–2029) on how ethnic norms impact citizens’ (il)liberal democratic attitudes.

He specialises in comparative politics, electoral behaviour, representation, and public opinion.

Alberto co-directs the electoral prediction market Predilect and co-leads WG1 at COST Action LGBTI+ Social and Economic (in)equalities (CA19103).

He earned his PhD in political science from the University of Zurich.

Alberto's research focuses on two key and interconnected challenges that modern democracies face: identity-based polarisation and the erosion of socio-culturally liberal attitudes, particularly concerning LGBTQ+ rights in relation to liberal democracy.

He has also specialised in understanding the discrimination patterns against LGBTQ+ and other minority political candidates within the European context.

His methodological expertise is in quantitative techniques, with a specific emphasis on experimental survey methods.

Some of Alberto's research has been published or is forthcoming in Nature Human Behaviour, Science Advances, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and Political Behavior, among other outlets.

@bertous

@bertous.bsky.social

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