John McTague, Ph.D.

Biography

John McTague is the Assistant Chair and Professor in the Department of Political Science at Towson University. He earned his B.A. (with honors) at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in 2003 and completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Government and Politics at University of Maryland, College Park in 2010. John joined the faculty at Towson University in the fall of 2012 following stints teaching at Washington College (Chestertown, MD) and Randolph-Macon College (Ashland, VA). He teaches courses in American politics, particularly the subjects of religion and politics and political parties, and political methodology. He also teaches a service-learning course on the political foundations of economic and racial inequality, incorporating seasons of the HBO series The Wire and community service in East Baltimore into the assigned coursework. He is currently engaged in multiple initiatives on campus that promote civic engagement among Towson University students.

John’s current research is primarily focused on the influence of the personal religious identities of members of the United States Senate on partisan polarization and public policy. He has also conducted studies on the causes of the gender gap in presidential elections, the relationship between authoritarianism and political behavior, how presidential campaigning influences roll-call voting in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the impact of geography on state-level politics. He has made over twenty research presentations at various professional conferences and his published work has been featured in many of the discipline’s most respected journals.

Publication

• McTague, John and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz. "The worker deserves his wages"? Religion and support for organized labor in the U.S. Senate. Politics and Religion. 2023; 16(1): 160-179. doi:10.1017/S1755048322000281