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David Broockman
Academic background
Alma materYale University (B.A.)
University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D)
Eric Schickler, Jasjeet S. Sekhon[1]
Academic work
DisciplinePolitical science
Sub-discipline
American politics

David Broockman is an American political scientist. He is an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley,[2] and is best known for his research on political polarization,[3] political persuasion, and reducing prejudice toward transgender people and undocumented immigrants, which has been widely covered in the national and international press.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] In 2025, he was noted as the most prolific contributor to top political science journals globally over the preceding five years.[11][12]

Early life and education

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He was raised in Texas.[13] Broockman attended Yale University,[14] where he was a member of the Skull and Bones Society,[15] and was influenced by a class taught by Don Green and Alan Gerber.[16] He has a PhD in Political Science from University of California, Berkeley.[14]

Career

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Broockman's career in academia began in 2015, when he became an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He was promoted to associate professor at Stanford in 2019 when he also became a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.[17] In 2020, he moved to become an associate professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.[2]

Research

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"When Contact Changes Minds"

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In 2015, while still a graduate student, Broockman along with Joshua Kalla and Peter Aronow, "expos[ed] one of the biggest scientific frauds in recent memory".[4] They showed that a prominent study entitled "When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality” published in Science Magazine was fraudulent.[6][9] The scientific paper was retracted[18] after the senior author, Donald Green, requested that it be so.[5] For exposing the fraud, Broockman and Kalla won the 2015 Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Transparency in the Social Sciences.[19]

The fraudulent paper purported to show that a single canvassing conversation can increase support for same-sex marriage in a durable way. The finding of fraud raised many doubts about the role of canvassing in political persuasion.[6] Although the scientific article was found to be fraudulent, Broockman and Kalla conjectured that the underlying claim that high-quality door-to-door canvassing conversations could decrease prejudice might be true.[7] In a subsequent article published in Science Magazine, Broockman and Kalla demonstrated that door-to-door canvassing successfully reduces transgender prejudice, with the effects persisting months later in follow-up surveys.[7][8][20]

Other research

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Broockman and Kalla have also published on the minimal effects of most persuasive interventions.[21]

Broockman's other research has also received significant public attention. For example, in a 2013 study, Broockman argues that legislators consistently believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. Some conjectured that this study explained why it is so challenging to pass liberal laws.[22]

Broockman has also critiqued prevailing understandings of political polarization. In a 2015 study, he argued that many voters do not have moderate views, and are happy to see polarized politicians representing them.[23] He has also argued that affective polarization does not meaningfully undermine political accountability.[24]

In a 2017 article with Neil Malhotra, he argues that there is significant heterogeneity in the preferences of wealthy individuals. The article shows that technology entrepreneurs support liberal redistributive, social, and globalist policies but conservative regulatory policies which is a combination of preferences that is rare among wealthy political donors more generally.[25]

Articles

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  • David Broockman; Robert Fruchtman (7 April 2022). "A wall of skyscrapers along Ocean Beach? It could happen if S.F. doesn't stop bungling its planning process". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
  • David Broockman; Joshua Kalla (25 February 2020). "Bernie Sanders looks electable in surveys — but it could be a mirage". Vox. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
  • David Broockman (11 October 2017). "Persuading voters is hard. That doesn't mean campaigns should give up". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 30 August 2022.

Awards

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Broockman has won numerous scholarly awards. In 2014, he won the Lawrence Longely Award for the best paper published on representation and electoral systems.[26] In 2015, he shared the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Transparency in the Social Sciences.[19] In 2017, he shared the Cialdini prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.[27] In 2019, he shared the Joseph L. Bernd award for the best article published in The Journal of Politics.[28] In 2020, he won the Emerging Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association's Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior section.[29] In 2024, he was selected to the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship program.[30]

Personal life

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On 5 July 2024, he married his same-sex partner Alex Lau in London.[31]

Selected publications

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References

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  1. ↑ Broockman, David E. (2015). Public Opinion and Political Representation (Thesis). University of California, Berkeley.
  2. 1 2 "Biography". University of California, Berkeley. 11 February 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  3. ↑ Edsall, Thomas (29 September 2021). "How Much Does How Much We Hate Each Other Matter?". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 September 2023.
  4. 1 2 "The Case of the Amazing Gay-Marriage Data: How a Graduate Student Reluctantly Uncovered a Huge Scientific Fraud". The Cut. 29 May 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  5. 1 2 Carey, Benedict; Belluck, Pam (20 May 2015). "Retraction Sought in Study on Views of Gay Marriage". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  6. 1 2 3 Carey, Benedict; Belluck, Pam (26 May 2015). "Doubts About Study of Gay Canvassers Rattle the Field". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  7. 1 2 3 Denizet-Lewis, Benoit (7 April 2016). "How Do You Change Voters' Minds? Have a Conversation". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  8. 1 2 "How Do You Change Voters' Minds? Have a Conversation". The Washington Post. 17 July 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  9. 1 2 "The Case of the Amazing Gay-Marriage Data: How a Grad Student Uncovered a Huge Fraud". Slate. 1 June 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  10. ↑ Resnick, Brian (29 January 2020). "How to talk someone out of bigotry". Vox.
  11. ↑ Barceló, Joan; Paik, Christopher; van der Windt, Peter; Zhai, Haoyu (2025). "A Global Ranking of Research Productivity of Political Science Departments". PS – Political Science & Politics. 58 (3): 574–585. doi:10.1017/S1049096524001239. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  12. ↑ Park, Jessica (10 December 2025). "Berkeley political science professors recognized as leading scholars in global research". UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  13. ↑ Knight, Heather (6 November 2021). "S.F. Supervisor Dean Preston invited YIMBYs to look at his housing record. They panned it". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  14. 1 2 "David Broockman". School of Political Sciences, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  15. ↑ Daniel D'Addario (19 April 2010). "Skull and Bones, 2010–2011".
  16. ↑ Andrews, Avital (13 April 2014). "The 30 Top Thinkers Under 30: The Google Intern and Ph.D. Student Who Wants to Focus Only on Questions That Matter". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  17. ↑ "Fellows". Hoover Institution. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  18. ↑ Hao, Rongzhang; Zhao, Rongtao; Qiu, Shaofu; Wang, Ligui; Song, Hongbin (5 June 2015). "The Case of the Amazing Gay-Marriage Data: How a Graduate Student Reluctantly Uncovered a Huge Scientific Fraud". Science. 348 (6239): 1100–1101. doi:10.1126/science.348.6239.1100-d. PMID 26045427. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  19. 1 2 "Leamer-Rosenthal Prize". Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  20. ↑ Broockman, David; Kalla, Joshua (2016). "Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing". Science. 352 (6282): 220–224. Bibcode:2016Sci...352..220B. doi:10.1126/science.aad9713. PMID 27124458. S2CID 206645910.
  21. ↑ Kalla, Joshua L.; Broockman, David E. (February 2018). "The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact in General Elections: Evidence from 49 Field Experiments". American Political Science Review. 112 (1): 148–166. doi:10.1017/S0003055417000363. S2CID 149306936.
  22. ↑ "One study explains why it's tough to pass liberal laws". The Washington Post. 4 March 2013. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  23. ↑ Klein, Ezra (8 July 2014). "No one's less moderate than moderates". Vox.
  24. ↑ Broockman, David; Kalla, Joshua; Westwood, Sean (22 December 2020). "Does Affective Polarization Undermine Democratic Norms or Accountability? Maybe Not". American Journal of Political Science. doi:10.31219/osf.io/9btsq. S2CID 241065420.
  25. ↑ Manjoo, Farhad (6 September 2017). "Silicon Valley's Politics: Liberal, With One Big Exception". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  26. ↑ "110th Annual APSA Meeting" (PDF).
  27. ↑ "Cialdini Prize - SPSP". www.spsp.org.
  28. ↑ "Joseph L Bernd JOP Best Paper Award – Southern Political Science Association". spsa.net.
  29. ↑ "Awards – Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior, Section 32".
  30. ↑ "Congratulations to the Political Science Scholars Elected into the 2024 Class of the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship Program". Political Science News. 16 May 2024. Retrieved 17 September 2024.
  31. ↑ @alexlau; Broockman, David [@dbroocksf] (5 September 2025). "Two months ago, on July 5, we got married under London's summer sky at the Gherkin. Walking down the aisle to @ladygaga 's "Always Remember Us This Way," we're overwhelmed by how much love filled that day - in our eyes, in our families' joy, in every captured smile. Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us. 💕 [...]". London. Retrieved 19 June 2026 – via Instagram.
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