Professor Carmines received a B.A. from Old Dominion University in 1968, an M.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1972, and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1975. He joined IU in 1975 and became Rudy Professor of political Science in 1993 and Warner O. Chapman Professor of Political Science in 2001. He chaired the Department of Political Science from 1990-1997. He taught at Oxford University in the spring semester, 1998-99.

Professor Carmines' principal areas of research and teaching are American politics, political behavior, and research methodology.

Professor Carmines' co-authored book, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics won the Gladys M. Kammerer Award in 1990 from the American Political Science Association for the best book in American national politics. In 1998, he won the Gladys M. Kammerer Award again for his co-authored book, Reaching Beyond Race and is the only person to have won this award twice. His papers have won outstanding paper awards at four academic conferences and conventions, and his works are among the most widely cited in political science. He received a Fellowship from the center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University where he was in residence in 2000-01. In 2001, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa by the faculty and alumni of the College of William and Mary based on his distinguished scholarly activities since graduation. In 1987, he was awarded the AMOCO Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching.