Alberto López Ortega

Political Scientist, VU Amsterdam & Harvard University

I am a Ramón Areces Fellow and Visiting Scholar for 2024-2025 at the Center of European Studies in Harvard University. Starting July 2025, I will be a tenured Assistant Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where I will develop my VENI project on how ethnic norms impact citizens’ (il)liberal democratic attitudes.

I specialize in comparative politics, electoral behavior, representation, and public opinion. I co-direct the electoral prediction market Predilect and co-lead WG1 at COST Action LGBTI+ Social and Economic (in)equalities (CA19103). Previously, I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Zurich.

My research focuses on two key and interconnected challenges that modern democracies face: identity-based polarization and the erosion of sociocultural attitudes, particularly concerning LGBTQ+ perspectives in relation to liberal democracy. I have also specialized in understanding the discrimination patterns against LGBTQ+ and other minority political candidates within the European context. My methodological expertise is in quantitative techniques, with a specific emphasis on experimental survey methods.

Some of my research has been published in Nature Human Behaviour, Science Advances, American Political Science Review, Political Behavior, and forthcoming in British Journal of Political Science among other outlets.

selected publications

Visual conjoint vs. text conjoint and the differential discriminatory effect of (visible) social categories

Alberto López Ortega , and Marco Radojevic

Political Behavior, 2024

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Does learning political candidates’ social categories through visual cues affect voter preferences? This paper explores this question by conducting a visual conjoint survey experiment with 2,324 German voters, varying whether respondents received information on candidates through explicit labels or pretested AI-generated candidate pictures. The results confirm our expectations that the way in which social categories are perceived affects preferences, with visual cues having a more significant effect on voter preferences compared to textual cues, leading to more discriminatory preferences for certain social categories. Moreover, we show that the effect of visual cues is moderated by the visibility of social categories, with visible social categories, such as gender binaries and ethnic in-/out-group, eliciting more discriminatory preferences with visual cues. The study sheds light on how visible and invisible social categories affect political candidates’ preferences and emphasizes the importance of considering the intersectionality of social categories and their relationship with ideology.
@article{lopezortega2024visualconjoint, author = {L{\'o}pez Ortega, Alberto and Radojevic, Marco}, title = {Visual conjoint vs. text conjoint and the differential discriminatory effect of (visible) social categories}, year = {2024}, journal = {Political Behavior}, }
The war on flags: The opposition to state-sponsored LGBTQ+ symbols

Alberto López Ortega

Research & Politics, 2024

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Negativity against LGBTQ+ and gender equality symbols is escalating across Western European countries, including those at the forefront of sexual modernism. Drawing on data from Spain, this paper theorizes and finds that state-sponsored LGBTQ+ symbols receive significantly more negativity than other aspects of LGBTQ+ issues related to general and specific attitudes toward formal rights. The negativity is primarily explained by support for Vox, a radical right-wing party, and age. The study provides insights into the complexities of public opinion surrounding LGBTQ+ symbols, offering a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community in terms of acceptance and visibility. Furthermore, it highlights the influence of political affiliations and generational factors in shaping these attitudes.
@article{lopezortega2024war, title = {The war on flags: The opposition to state-sponsored LGBTQ+ symbols}, author = {L{\'o}pez Ortega, Alberto}, journal = {Research \& Politics}, volume = {11}, number = {1}, year = {2024}, publisher = {Sage Publications}, }
Instrumentally inclusive: the political psychology of homonationalism

Stuart J Turnbull-Dugarte , and Alberto López Ortega

American Political Science Review, 2023

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Can nativist attitudes condition support for LGBT+ rights? The sustained advance in pro-LGBT+ attitudes in the West often contrasts with the greening of anti-immigrant sentiment propagated by nativist supply-side actors. We argue that these parallel trends are causally connected, theorizing that exposure to sexually conservative ethnic out-groups can provoke an instrumental increase in LGBT+ inclusion, particularly among those hostile toward immigration. Leveraging experiments in Britain and Spain, we provide causal evidence that citizens strategically liberalize their levels of support for LGBT+ rights when opponents of these measures are from the ethnic out-group. In a context where sexuality-based liberalism is nationalized, increasing tolerance toward LGBT+ citizens is driven by a desire among nativist citizens to socially disidentify from those out-groups perceived as inimical to these nationalized norms. Our analyses provide a critical interpretation of positive trends in LGBT+ tolerance with instrumental liberalism masking lower rates of genuine shifts in LGBT+ inclusion.
@article{turnbull2023instrumentally, title = {Instrumentally inclusive: the political psychology of homonationalism}, author = {Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J and L{\'o}pez Ortega, Alberto}, journal = {American Political Science Review}, pages = {1--19}, year = {2023}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, }