With her credentials, if this were truly a "personal quest to find the answer" she would have no trouble at all gathering a group of esteemed peers for the purposes of a study.
It seems more likely she is motivated, in what must be a very time-consuming personal effort, not to seek an answer but to force some sort of outcome. Perhaps something along the line of some judicial order handicapping Republicans by 5% or some such.
'In primaries, the favored candidate appears to always be the Republican establishment candidate, above a tea party challenger.'