Associate professor Matt Lesenyie is helping CSULB students discover what voters want

Election Day’s approach means it’s time for a steady stream of news, opinion and ads, with many different sources claiming to represent the voice of the people.

Cal State Long Beach faculty member Matt Lesenyie helps students — and the public — cut through the chatter.

Lesenyie, associate professor of political science, specializes in the study of public opinion. He teaches students how to create their own surveys and analyze polls for research or to understand election news. Lesenyie also shares knowledge with the wider world, providing comments to reporters covering such issues as civic education and California’s gubernatorial race.  

Ultimately, he hopes students gain confidence to promote a diffusion of knowledge, pointing friends and family toward reliable sources of information.

“That would be the payoff, that it doesn’t end with this class,” Lesenyie said.

From sea to shining sea

Lesenyie encourages students to ask questions about people who take and respond to surveys. Are a given poll’s methods transparent? How are undecided voters accounted for? Do surveys indicate durable opinions, or just reactions?  

“I’m definitely less likely to take things at face value and recognize that I’m looking at something partisan, and not scientific,” Macey Miller, a third-year political science and psychology student, said. “It helps to look at things more objectively.”

Lesenyie’s undergraduate students monitor polls in competitive races across the country, providing a glimpse of how elections can play out in states with varied ideological blends. He also guides undergraduate and graduate students through the process of crafting surveys.

Honors student Shaun Joseph Uy is working with Lesenyie on a thesis incorporating a survey assessing how positive or negative framing can affect respondents’ views of immigration. The experience helps him to think critically about polling he encounters in the media, he said.

“When you’re looking at news, especially now and seeing how surveys are done, I look at them and ask ‘What were the questions? What was the language behind it?’ Was it trying to engage opinion?” Uy, a fourth-year political science student, said. “We also learn that there are experiments embedded in the survey, such as mine.”

Uy, who also volunteers for on-campus get-out-the-vote efforts with the campus’ College Ballot Bowl team, is considering law school or an advanced degree in political science.  

Some students and alumni who have studied with Lesenyie want to play a an active role in policymaking. Graduate student Paige Ramirez, who wants to work in state government, said polling can be an important method of participation and that she hopes knowledge gained at The Beach can help her in public service.

“I do think we need more public servants who actually care about what the public needs from those who are serving us,” she said.

'Give them the keys’

Lesenyie has firsthand experience in California government and politics. After completing an internship with the Schwarzenegger Administration and a fellowship with the state Assembly’s chief clerk, he worked as a legislative aide for a lobbying firm. This helps him to go beyond the numbers to help students understand politicians’ motivations and the pace of life in the state Capitol.

He planned to study interest group politics while pursuing his doctorate before discovering that pursuing expertise in survey methods would enable him to study a broad variety of subjects. At CSULB, he encourages students’ curiosity.

“The last few years have been this very hands-on bit when I give them the keys and let them do the work,” he said.

Dana Ahmad ‘24, ‘26 determined to go “full throttle” in her political science studies, continues to work with Lesenyie on an independent research project assessing how voters punish or reward obstructionist legislators. She is also starting  a Long Beach Public Service Corps fellowship in a City Council office and aspires to a career in local government or as a professor.

“I was really enchanted by this idea of what the framers wanted, this change that they were seeking, this power that they were trying to run away from and give back to the people,” she said.