Bernard Tamas

Statement of teaching and research interests:

Dr. Tamas is an expert on elections, electoral bias, and US third parties. His research on electoral bias in US elections was funded by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab and the American Political Science Association. Dr. Tamas has held a Fulbright scholarship to the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-MIT Data Center at Harvard University. Prior to joining VSU, he was a Visiting Research Scholar at Columbia University and has previously taught at Williams College, Brandeis University, and Illinois State University. He also worked as a software developer at Princeton University. 

Dr. Tamas is co-Chapter Leader of the Georgia Chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, and is Senior Fellow (2025) at the Electoral Integrity Project. He is an Associate Editor of The Social Science Journal, and is a member of the Southern Political Science Association's Membership Development Committee (2025-2026). 

Dr. Tamas is a widely published author, including of the book, The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties (2018). He is a frequent political commentator on current issues and has been interviewed by national and international media: NPR, ABC News (US), CBC News, ABC (Australia), BBC World,  CNN International, RFI, and political blogs including You Don’t Have To Yell, Talk Radio One, Matter of Fact, Hear Me Out, None of the Above. His expert commentary has also been published by several news outlets including The Guardian, New York Times, Politico, NBC News, The Economist, BBC, Voice of America, The Washington Post, Deutsche Welle, The Conversation, FiveThirtyEight, The Denver Post, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, The Hill, USA Today, Newsweek, Fox News, Axios, Governing and others.

• American Government 
• Elections and Political Parties 
• US Third Parties 
• Electoral Systems and Electoral Bias
• Research Methodology 

Most recent publications or scholarly output:

• Bernard Tamas (2023). “Does Malapportionment Favor the Republican Party? An Analysis of US Senate Elections and the Electoral College”. The Forum.
• Bernard Tamas (2023) “Beyond Gerrymandering: A Structural Crisis of the American Electoral System”. New Political Science 45 (2): 359-379
• Bernard Tamas, Ron Johnston, and Charles Pattie (2022). “The Impact of Turnout on Partisan Bias in US House Elections, 1972-2018”. Social Science Quarterly 103(1): 181-192.
• Bernard Tamas and Joseph Robbins (2021), “Electoral Bias and Authoritarianism: The Collapse of Two-Party Competition in the Jim Crow South”, Journal of Political Science 49(1).
• Bernard Tamas (2019), “American Disproportionality: A Historical Analysis of Partisan Bias in Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives” Election Law Journal 18(1): 47-62.   
• Bernard Tamas (2018), The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties: Poised for Political Revival?  New York, NY: Routledge.  
• Bernard Tamas (2017), "Does Fusion Undermine American Third Parties? An Analysis of House Elections from 1870 to 2016." New Political Science 39(4).  
• Bernard Tamas and Matthew Hindman (2014), “Ballot Access Laws and the Decline of American Third-Parties”, Election Law Journal 13(2): 260-276.  
• Bernard Ivan Tamas (2008), From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle For Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary, 1989-1994. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, Columbia University Press.  
• Gardenia Harris, Bernard Ivan Tamas, and Nancy S. Lind (2007), Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy: Right Versus Left. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.  
• Nancy S. Lind and Bernard Ivan Tamas (2006), Bush Controversies: Pro & Con Primary Documents. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press.