Profile

Dotty Lynch

Executive in Residence
School of Communication

  • Additional Positions at AU

    Director of the SOC/SPA joint MA program in Political Communication
  • Dotty Lynch is a full-time professor of Public Communication. She is the director of the SOC/SPA MA in Political Communication program which launched in 2010. The 2012 election marks Lynch's 22nd election cycle in congressional and presidential campaigns as a professional journalist and pollster. She serves as a political consultant for CBS News doing on-air radio analysis and as a member of the CBS News Election Decision Desk. She was the CBS News senior political editor (1985-2005) and a member of the CBS News/New York Times polling consortium. She began teaching at AU in 2006. She team-taught a class on the presidential primaries which brought 28 students on a 5-day field trip to New Hampshire for the 2008 primary. During the 2008 general election she taught a class on Politics, Polling and the Youth Vote, the centerpiece of which was a poll of young voters conducted by AU students in conjunction with USA Today and Gallup organizations. In 2009 Lynch wrote "How the Media Covered the 2008 Elections: The Role of Earned Media" for Thurber and Nelson's Campaigns and Elections American Style, Westview Publications. In 2010 she wrote political analyses for The Fiscal Times.

  • Degrees

    BA Marymount Manhattan College; MA Fordham University
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  • OFFICE

  • SOC - School of Communication
  • Mary Graydon - 331F
  • Monday and Thursday 12pm-3pm, or by appointment

  • CONTACT INFO

  • (202) 885-2968 (Mobile)
  • Send email Profile UserID

  • FOR THE MEDIA

  • To request an interview for a
    news story, call AU Communications
    at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

  • Fall 2013

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Selected Publications

 

Media Appearances

       
  • Political Consultant, for CBS Radio. Did over 1500 interviews for CBS affiliates on the 2008 campaign
    •    
  • Has also appeared on CNN International, BBC, MSNBC, CSPAN, PBS (The News Hour with Jim Lehrer) and numerous local TV affiliates

Honors, Awards, and Fellowships

       
  • Fellow, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics, Spring 2006

AU Expert

Area of Expertise: Politics, survey research, polling, campaigns and elections, young voters, women in politics, journalism

Additional Information: Dotty Lynch is a political consultant for CBS News. She stepped down at the end of 2005 as the senior political editor of CBS News, where she covered politics for 20 years. Lynch began her career in politics and journalism at NBC in 1968. In 1972, she joined the polling firm of Cambridge Survey Research, where she worked on polling for the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter and for many Senate and gubernatorial campaigns. In 1979-80 she worked as an in-house pollster for the presidential campaign of Senator Edward Kennedy. Lynch developed the concept of the gender gap and is one of the major authorities on women in politics. In 1983 she opened Lynch Research, a political polling firm where she was the first woman pollster in a presidential campaign, for the Gary Hart presidential primary race and the Mondale-Ferraro general election.

The 2010 election marks Lynch's 21st election cycle in congressional and presidential campaigns as a professional journalist and pollster. At CBS News, she covered six presidential campaigns, 12 national political conventions, 22 presidential and vice-presidential debates, and seven midterm elections. Lynch was the codirector of the Election and Survey Unit, where she managed a team of researchers to provide information and analysis to CBS TV broadcasts, CBS Radio, and CBSNEWS.com. She wrote a weekly column, Political Points, for CBSNEWS.com from 2001 to 2006. Lynch worked on political broadcasts with CBS correspondents, including Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl, Bob Schieffer, Ed Bradley, Charles Kuralt, Mike Wallace, and Diane Sawyer; in particular on their interviews with prominent American leaders, including Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dan Quayle, and virtually all presidential candidates, major U.S. cabinet officials, and congressional and political leaders. In 2008, she brought a team of American University students to New Hampshire for the presidential primary and in the fall semester taught a political polling course that worked with USA Today and the Gallup polling organization on a survey of young voters.

Lynch is a member of the CBS News Election Decision Desk and an on-air analyst for CBS Radio. In 2009 she wrote "How the Media Covered the 2008 Elections: The Role of Earned Media" for Thurber and Nelson's Campaigns and Elections American Style (Westview Pubications). In addition to CBS News she has appeared on C-SPAN, PBS Newshour, MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, and NPR. She is also the director of American University’s MA in Political Communication program which was launched in 2010 as a joint degree between the School of Communication and the School of Public Affairs.

Media Relations
To request an interview please call AU Media Relations at 202-885-5950 or submit an interview request form.

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