David Broockman

David Broockman is an American political scientist. He is an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, political persuasion, and reducing prejudice toward transgender people and undocumented immigrants, which has been widely covered in the national and international press. In 2025, he was noted as the most prolific contributor to top political science journals globally over the preceding five years.

Early life and education He was raised in Texas. Broockman attended Yale University, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones Society, and was influenced by a class taught by Don Green and Alan Gerber. He has a PhD in Political Science from University of California, Berkeley. In 2020, he moved to become an associate professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

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. He has also argued that affective polarization does not meaningfully undermine political accountability.

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. In 2015, he shared the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Transparency in the Social Sciences. In 2019, he shared the Joseph L. Bernd award for the best article published in The Journal of Politics. In 2020, he won the Emerging Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association's Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior section. In 2024, he was selected to the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship program.

Personal life On 5 July 2025, he married his same-sex partner Alex Lau in London.

Selected publications

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