She is the author of several in‐depth survey reports, including “The State of Free Speech and Tolerance in America: Attitudes about Free Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Liberty, and Tolerance of Political Expression,” “Wall Street vs. The Regulators: Public Attitudes on Banks, Financial Regulation, Consumer Finance, and the Federal Reserve,” and “Policing in America: Understanding Public Attitudes toward the Police.” Ekin’s other publications include “The Five Types of Trump Voters” and “Religious Trump Voters: How Faith Moderates Attitudes about Immigration, Race, and Identity.”
Before joining Cato, she spent four years as the director of polling for Reason Foundation where she conducted national public opinion polls and published specialized research studies. In 2014, Ekins authored an in‐depth study of young Americans, “Millennials: The Politically Unclaimed Generation.” Prior to joining Reason, Ekins worked as a research associate at Harvard Business School, where she coauthored several Harvard Business Case Studies and helped design and conduct research experiments and surveys.
She has discussed her research on C‑SPAN, CNBC, NPR, Fox News, and Fox Business, and her research has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times. Ekins is an active member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the American Political Science Association.
She holds a PhD and an MA in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation examined sources of support for the Tea Party movement and the moral values undergirding public demand for limited government.
