Political Science Faculty

David A. Hopkins joined the Boston College political science department in 2010. His research and teaching interests include American political parties and elections, the U.S. Congress, voting behavior, public opinion, media and culture, and research methods.

His latest book, Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Polarized American Politics (Cambridge University Press), co-authored with Matt Grossmann, investigates the causes and consequences of the American public’s increasing polarization along the lines of educational attainment. Polarized by Degrees shows that college-educated citizens increasingly favor a Democratic Party that presents itself as intellectually erudite, culturally progressive, a champion of expert-led governance, and comfortable with a changing American society, while whites without a college degree overwhelmingly prefer a Republican Party that stands for traditional cultural values, voices suspicion of scientists, journalists, and the educational system, and laments the decline of American greatness. Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report and PBS has praised the book as “really insightful” while Thomas Edsall of the New York Times calls it “essential reading for everyone trying to figure out what the hell is going on in American politics.”

Professor Hopkins’s 2017 book Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics (Cambridge University Press) explains how the rise of the culture war, in combination with winner-take-all elections, has produced a regionally divided electorate and an ideologically polarized party system in the United States; it was rated "essential” and named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. His 2016 book Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (Oxford University Press), co-authored with Matt Grossmann, demonstrates that each major party has a distinctive character: the Republican Party functions as the agent of an ideological movement and the Democratic Party is organized as a coalition of social groups. The Economist called Asymmetric Politics “the best recent book about how the two major parties became what they are,” while Ezra Klein of Vox commented that “Not many books change how you think about American politics. This one will." Asymmetric Politics received the 2018 Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political Organizations and Parties section of the American Political Science Association. 

Professor Hopkins is also the co-author of Presidential Elections: Strategies and Structures of American Politics and his research has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Polity, and American Politics Research. Between 2019 and 2024, he served as the co-editor of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics.

Professor Hopkins has written about contemporary political issues for news organizations such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Vox, and he frequently serves as an expert commentator on American politics for international, national, and Boston-area newspapers, magazines, websites, radio and television programs, and podcasts. He blogs regularly about current events at honestgraft.com and can be found on X/Twitter at @DaveAHopkins.