I am a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Duke University. My research explores how social connections impact political attitudes and behavior in American and comparative contexts, bridging literature from social networks, psychology, and public health. My dissertation focuses on loneliness and its political consequences, including its relationship with political participation and susceptibility to misinformation, employing large-scale survey data, survey experiments, and text corpora. I demonstrate that loneliness fosters political discontent, which in turn is associated with lower electoral participation but higher engagement in contentious non-institutionalized activities, such as protesting. My work is supported by the APSA Dissertation Grant (DDRIG). Another facet of my research investigates the interplay between affective and cognitive elements in voting behavior. In The Fundamental Voter (2024), my coauthors and I identify five fundamental forces shaping the American electorate by broadening the partisan cleavage and consequently intensifying polarization.