He specializes in the study of elections, voting and public opinion in Canada and the United States. He is broadly interested in the psychology of political learning and attitude change in diverse domains of political behaviour. While Matthews has written on diverse topics, at present, his on-going research is focused on: the role of uncertainty in support for costly public goods (or “policy tradeoffs”); economic inequality and electoral accountability; priming effects during election campaigns; and limits on partisan bias in political perception.