Matt Barreto
Dr. Barreto is the Faculty Director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. In 2017, he founded LPPI at the Luskin School of Public Affairs with Dean Gary Segura and Sonja Diaz.
Matt Barreto is a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies at UCLA. Barreto came to UCLA in 2015 after serving as a professor of political science at the University of Washington, Seattle, and director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from UC Irvine. His research examines the political participation of racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S., and he has taught various courses on racial and ethnic politics, the Voting Rights Act, elections, statistics, and American politics. Barreto has published nearly 50 peer-reviewed research articles, chapters and books that examine Latino public opinion, voting behavior, and racial politics in America. His books include “Ethnic Cues: The Role of Shared Ethnicity in Latino Political Behavior” (University of Michigan Press), “Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America” (Princeton University Press), and “Latino America: How America’s Most Dynamic Population Is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation” (Public Affairs).
With a background in Latino voting patterns, Barreto has co-authored the 2018 Midterm Elections & The Latino Vote, which focuses on the growing political impact of Latinos in elections, as well as Assessing Latino Vote Growth 2014 to 2018, an analysis of the growing Latino electorate. Barreto has been invited to brief the U.S. Senate, the White House and U.S. House committees, and he has been a keynote speaker at many national Latino-focused conferences, including NALEO, LULAC, CHCI, NCLR and others. Barreto has been an expert witness in numerous Voting Rights Act lawsuits, providing statistical analysis and testimony on vote dilution, racially polarized voting, and voter identification laws. His testimony and research reports were cited in decisions against voter identification laws in Texas, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
