She studies the causes of voter turnout in American politics, including election laws, and how those causes can vary among the population.
[1] She then continued her graduate education at Washington University in St. Louis, where she received a PhD in political science in 1988.
The book sought to explain variations in electoral participation among ethnic groups in the United States by building on a rational choice framework of voter engagement, which Frederick C. Harris called "an important step toward unraveling how participation and mobilization differ among African-Americans, Latinos, and Anglos".
[3] Using several datasets to test her rational choice models, she checks for the impact of elite mobilization, relational goods, and racial and ethnic context on the participation of members of different groups.
[2][5] In addition to her peer-reviewed academic work, Leighley has written pieces or been cited on topics like US voter turnout in media outlets such as The New York Times,[6][7] The Washington Post,[8] The Atlantic,[9] and NPR.