Professor Kelly D Patterson

Kelly Patterson is Director of the Center for the Study of Elections Democracy and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. After teaching at Franklin and Marshall College from 1989 to 1993, Patterson came to Brigham Young University, where his research and teaching activities focus on American politics, political parties, Congress and elections, public...See more

Kelly Patterson is Director of the Center for the Study of Elections Democracy and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. After teaching at Franklin and Marshall College from 1989 to 1993, Patterson came to Brigham Young University, where his research and teaching activities focus on American politics, political parties, Congress and elections, public opinion, quantitative methods, and political theory. He is Coinvestigator on the 2004 CSED projects monitoring soft money and issue advocacy in competitive federal elections and will also be directing the KBYU-Utah Colleges Exit Poll. He is the author of Political Parties and the Maintenance of Liberal Democracy (Columbia University Press 1996) and editor of Contemplating the People's Branch: Legislative Dynamics in the Twenty-First Century. His research articles have appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, and other research journals in political science. He is a former Congressional Fellow with the American Political Science Association. Patterson and his wife, Jeanene, live in Salt Lake City with their two children, Andrew and Kate. See less