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America’s
Political Pulse

About the lab · Faculty

Sean J. Westwood

Associate Professor, Department of Government, Dartmouth College

citations, Google Scholar
14,821
h-index
28
Portrait of Sean J. Westwood

Director, Polarization Research Lab. Westwood’s CV, publications, corrections to published work, grants, teaching and press coverage follow below.

Google Scholar figures as of Oct 17, 2026.

Biography

Sean is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and director of the Polarization Research Lab (PRL). His primary area of research is political behavior and public opinion. His work focuses on understanding where partisan biases originate, where they manifest (inside and outside political domains), and their bounds. He is particularly interested at examining how partisanship and information from political elites affect the behavior of citizens. He has expertise in both survey methods and computational social science. His work has been published in journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, Nature Human Behavior, and the American Journal of Political Science.

His work has been covered by The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Vox, Foreign Affairs, New Republic, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fortune, Financial Times, Bloomberg, NPR, New York Magazine, USA Today and other local outlets.

Research interests

  • Political Behavior
  • Polarization
  • Affective Polarization
  • Public Opinion
  • Partisan Prejudice
  • Democratic Norms

Back to topNext: Publications

Publications

42 peer-reviewed articles, 3 books, 2 book chapters, 12 technical reports and 2 datasets.

Newest first, as listed in the CV; articles are numbered from the earliest, 1. Titles link to the article where a copy is online, and Westwood’s name is in bold in each author list.

Books 3

Peer-reviewed articles 40

  • 40

    America's Political Pulse: A Database of Democratic Attitudes Across All Levels of U.S. Government

    Holliday, Derek E.; Lelkes, Yphtach; Mitchell, Ellie M.; Westwood, Sean J.

    Nature Scientific Data, forthcoming

  • 39

    Defending Democracy or Fueling Division? Admonishing Anti-Democratic Behavior in a Polarized Nation

    Walk, Erin; Holliday, Derek E.; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

    British Journal of Political Science, in press

  • 38

    Nationalist Frames Erode Opposition to Violent Hate Crimes

    Dancygier, Rafaela; Mummolo, Jonathan; Westwood, Sean J.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus, in press

  • 37

    Affective Polarization: Recent Developments and Future Directions

    Iyengar, Shanto; Lelkes, Yphtach; Levendusky, Matthew; Malhotra, Neil; Westwood, Sean J.

    Annual Review of Political Science, in press

  • 36

    Skepticism and Common Ground in Political Reform: Navigating Public, Elite and Partisan Divides

    Holliday, Derek; Lelkes, Yphtach; Ploger, Gavin; Westwood, Sean J.

    Nature Communications, forthcoming

  • 35

    Public Responses to Atrocities Depend on Partisanship and Context, Not Labels

    Lelkes, Yphtach; Mitchell, Ellie M.; Walk, Erin; Westwood, Sean J.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026)

  • 34

    Systemic electioneering from the evangelical pulpit: Evidence from a computational analysis (opens in a new tab)

    Jacob, Marc; Wolken, Samuel; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026)

    Covered in: The Economist, Axios, Harper's

  • 33

    Entrepreneurs of Conflict: Media Attention without Consequences (opens in a new tab)

    Jacob, Marc; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus (2026)

Peer-reviewed articles in other fields 2

Book chapters 2

  • Public Opinion in the Age of AI

    Clinton, Joshua D.; Barari, Soubhik; Busby, Ethan; Buskirk, Trent D.; Duch, Ray; Haensch, Anna-Carolina; Hillygus, D. Sunshine; Kennedy, Courtney; Munger, Kevin; Rivers, Doug; Westwood, Sean J.

    In Artificial Intelligence, Politics, and Political Science, edited by Persily, Nathaniel and Tucker, Joshua A., American Political Science Association (2026)

  • Beyond Attitudes: Incorporating Measures of Behavior in Survey Experiments

    Peterson, Erik; Westwood, Sean J.; Iyengar, Shanto

    In a volume edited by Druckman, James N. and Green, Donald P., Cambridge University Press (2020)

Datasets 2

  • America's Political Pulse - Elected Official Data

    Westwood, Sean J.; Lelkes, Yphtach (2024)

  • America's Political Pulse - Citizen Survey Data

    Westwood, Sean J.; Lelkes, Yphtach (2024)

Technical reports 12

  • The path to 2024 – American attitudes on the 2024 election

    Holliday, D.E.; Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

  • The path to 2024 – American attitudes on political scientists

    Holliday, D.E.; Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

  • The path to 2024 – American attitudes on democratic backsliding

    Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

  • The path to 2024 – American support for SCOTUS

    Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

  • The path to 2024 – American support for culture war issues

    Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

  • The path to 2024 – American attitudes on corporate political action

    Holliday, D.E.; Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

  • Cross-national support for political violence

    Jacob, M.S.; Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

  • The path to 2024 – American attitudes on AI, misinformation, and democracy

    Jacob, M.S.; Lelkes, Y.; Westwood, Sean J. (2024)

Back to topNext: Corrections

Corrections to published work

507 corrections to 34 published papers from 2012 to 2026.

Westwood checked his published papers against their public replication archives, supplements, preregistrations and the works they cite, and lists each error found with its correction. Corrected numbers, tables and figures are recomputed from the public replication data.

Every paper and what its corrections change →

Back to topNext: Under review

Under review and in progress

7 papers under review, 2 of them invited to revise and resubmit, and 7 works in progress.

Under review 7

  • Antisemitism Is Not a Red Line for Most Voters

    Adida, Claire L.; Dancygier, Rafaela; Hopkins, Daniel J.; Mummolo, Jonathan; Westwood, Sean J.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

    Revise and resubmit

  • Meta-perceptions are pseudo-beliefs

    Walk, Erin; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

    American Journal of Political Science

    Revise and resubmit

  • Visibility of Ideological Outliers: A Cross-Platform Analysis of the U.S. Media Ecosystem

    Lelkes, Yphtach; Walk, Erin; Hopkins, Daniel J.; Westwood, Sean J.

  • Partisan affiliation dictates perceptions of and responses to political violence

    Holliday, Derek E.; Mitchell, Ellie M.; Westwood, Sean J.

  • Citizens of Democracies Value Government Responsiveness to Crises Over Democratic Norms

    Walk, Erin; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

  • Most Violence is Political: Diagnosing the Nature and Threat of Political Violence in America

    Holliday, Derek; Westwood, Sean J.

  • Hearts Not Minds: Coalition Cues, Group Affect, and the Limits of the Group-Centric Model

    Brown, Xanni; Lelkes, Yphtach; Ahn, Chloe; Westwood, Sean J.

Works in progress 7

  • How to Measure the Burdens of Voting

    Grimmer, Justin; Hersh, Eitan; Westwood, Sean J.

  • Measuring Perceived Slant in Large Language Models Through User Evaluations

    Westwood, Sean J.; Grimmer, Justin; Hall, Andrew B.; Stewart, Charles

  • Media Incentives and the Amplification of Ideological Outliers in U.S. Politics

    Walk, Erin; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

  • Measuring Support for Democratic Norms.

    Ploger, Gavin; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

  • A Statistical Framework to Engage the Problem of Disengaged Survey Respondents: Measuring Public Support for Partisan Violence

    Tyler, Matthew; Grimmer, Justin; Westwood, Sean J.

    Written with a student

  • Support for Political Violence in the United States in Comparative Perspective

    Jacob, Marc; Lelkes, Yphtach; Westwood, Sean J.

  • Determining the Accuracy of Probabilistic U.S. Presidential Election Forecasts May Take Decades

    Grimmer, Justin; Knox, Dean; Westwood, Sean J.

Back to topNext: In the news

In the news

193 articles about Westwood or Westwood’s research since 2014; the latest appeared in This is OU on Oct 13, 2026.

All coverage of Westwood, by year and outlet →

Back to topNext: Grants and awards

Grants and awards

19 grants and 6 awards; the most recent award is the Cozzarelli Prize (National Academy of Sciences, 2025).

Awards and honors 6

  • Cozzarelli Prize · National Academy of Sciences2025
  • Friedman Fellowship · Dartmouth College2021
  • Best Paper Honorable Mention · ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems2015
  • Roberta Sigel Junior Scholar Paper Award · International Society of Political Psychology2015
  • Nathan Maccoby Dissertation Award · Stanford University2015
  • Burke Award · Dartmouth College2015

Grants 19

  • Private GiftPolarization Research Lab · PI$500,0002027-2029
  • The Carob TrustPolarization Research Lab · PI$500,0002026-2027
  • Stand Together TrustPolarization Research Lab · PI$400,0002026-2027
  • Vine & Fig TreePolarization Research Lab · PI$25,000
  • Private GiftPolarization Research Lab · PI$50,0002025
  • Private GiftPolarization Research Lab · PI$100,0002025
  • Stand Together TrustPolarization Research Lab · PI$533,0002025-2026
  • Carnegie CorporationPolarization Research Lab · PI$500,0002024-2027

Back to topNext: Service

Service

23 service roles listed in the CV.

  • Board Member, More in Common
  • Co-Chair, Dartmouth's Heterodox Academy Chapter
  • Associate Editor, Public Opinion Quarterly2024-
  • Lead Guest Editor, Public Opinion Quarterly Special Issue on Polarization2027
  • Academic Advisory Board, Revitalizing American Institutions, Hoover Institution
  • Member APSR Editorial Board2024-
  • Guest Editor, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Member APSA Task Force on AI and Public Opinion

Back to topNext: Teaching

Teaching evaluations

4 courses with student evaluations from 2025 to 2026.

Students rate each course and its teaching from 1 (excellent) to 5 (poor), so a lower score is better. The comments are the positive comments in each report; the full report is linked.

  • Conservatism, Liberalism, and American Culture Wars

    Winter 2026 · Full report (PDF) (opens in a new tab)

    Course quality
    1.1of 5, 1 is best
    Teaching effectiveness
    1.1of 5, 1 is best

    Student comments

    • “Best professor ever! Westwood has high expectations but it made me work really hard. He clearly put a lot of time and research into each lecture, and it definitely impacted the learning experience overall. The presentations starting in week 6 allows students to do the work Westwood had been doing for a week on topics we were not comfortable with (topics that went against our own views), which fulfilled the goal of the course as a whole.”
    • “Explained arguments clearly”
    • “Greatest professor in the department. Not even close.”

  • Quantitive Political Analysis

    Winter 2026 · Full report (PDF) (opens in a new tab)

    Course quality
    1.2of 5, 1 is best
    Teaching effectiveness
    1.2of 5, 1 is best

    Student comments

    • “Everything mentioned above. Westwood is a fabulous teacher, and you can't even get annoyed with him when the concepts are difficult because he's clearly so knowledgable and explains them so well. He should continue with the overall structure of the class and homework.”
    • “Incredibly charismatic and knowledgeable lecturer.”
    • “Integrating 6 7 into the slides LOL In general very engaging / helped explain statistical concepts to everyone in room with banter”

  • Political Communication

    Fall 2025 · Full report (PDF) (opens in a new tab)

    Course quality
    1.2of 5, 1 is best
    Teaching effectiveness
    1.2of 5, 1 is best

    Student comments

    • “Explain concepts in lecture very clearly”
    • “Being there for students but challenging them in a very respectful way. Lectures are also great and easy to understand”
    • “I think prof Westwood is one of the best ive had at Dartmouth and this is due to many things including his dynamic teaching style. his enthusiasm and energy made the class engaging and helped maintain student interest. Including the thoughtful selection of readings and materials, and the variety of perspectives and case studies enriched the course. As well as the inclusive classroom atmosphere, he encouraged respectful dialogue and made it easy for students with different viewpoints to participate.”

  • Policy Implementation

    Spring 2025 · Full report (PDF) (opens in a new tab)

    Course quality
    1.3of 5, 1 is best
    Teaching effectiveness
    1.1of 5, 1 is best

    Student comments

    • “I enjoyed the structure of the class, especially the emphasis on self-driven simulations that placed us within the context of realistic scenarios. I also enjoyed the communal nature of the class--it made it a lot easier to learn from one another as we chipped in our commentary.”
    • “I liked turning the 3a into one class and then having the x hour. That long block period made learning easier.”
    • “The professor did an excellent job introducing many relevant examples in order to defend his assertions in class, which I appreciated. His humor and interesting comparisons helped keep lectures engaging. He took full advantage of the small class size to foster a more conversational atmosphere; he was however still fully able to command respect.”

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