David A. Hopkins
@davehopkins.bsky.social
Political scientist at Boston College & (co-)author of Polarized by Degrees / Asymmetric Politics / Red Fighting Blue / Presidential Elections. Blog at Honest Graft.
The Dubious Theory That Working-Class Voters Want Candidates Who "Look Like Them": open.substack.com/pub/honestgr...
The Dubious Theory That Working-Class Voters Want Candidates Who "Look Like Them"
I vote the issues. You vote the clothes.
open.substack.com
The Dubious Theory That Working-Class Voters Want Candidates Who "Look Like Them": open.substack.com/pub/honestgr...
The Dubious Theory That Working-Class Voters Want Candidates Who "Look Like Them"
I vote the issues. You vote the clothes.
open.substack.com
Young People Are Fascinating—Just Don't Expect Them to Decide the 2026 Election: honestgraft.substack.com/p/young-peop...
Young People Are Fascinating—Just Don't Expect Them to Decide the 2026 Election
Voting this year? OK, Boomer!
honestgraft.substack.com
Young People Are Fascinating—Just Don't Expect Them to Decide the 2026 Election: open.substack.com/pub/honestgr...
Young People Are Fascinating—Just Don't Expect Them to Decide the 2026 Election
Voting this year? OK, Boomer!
open.substack.com
Republican Governing Mistakes Are the Great Partisan Equalizer: open.substack.com/pub/honestgr...
Republican Governing Mistakes Are the Great Partisan Equalizer
The GOP's hostility to expert judgment has a political cost.
open.substack.com
Republican Governing Mistakes Are the Great Partisan Equalizer: open.substack.com/pub/honestgr...
Republican Governing Mistakes Are the Great Partisan Equalizer
The GOP's hostility to expert judgment has a political cost.
open.substack.com
Huge congratulations to our 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Titles winners - Polarized by Degrees by @mattgrossmann.bsky.social & @davehopkins.bsky.social, Intersectional Advocacy by @mperezbrower.bsky.social, and Recasting the Latin American Right by Andrés Borges, Ryan Lloyd, & Gabriel Vommaro!
Five Lessons from the 2025 Election Results: honestgraft.substack.com/p/five-lesso...
Five Lessons from the 2025 Election Results
“Unless the president is unusually popular, the party holding the White House will suffer significant losses in off-year elections” is a very well-established pattern, so nothing about the Democratic ...
honestgraft.substack.com
Five Lessons from the 2025 Election Results: honestgraft.substack.com/p/five-lesso...
Five Lessons from the 2025 Election Results
“Unless the president is unusually popular, the party holding the White House will suffer significant losses in off-year elections” is a very well-established pattern, so nothing about the Democratic ...
honestgraft.substack.com
Five Lessons from the 2025 Election Results: honestgraft.substack.com/p/five-lesso...
Five Lessons from the 2025 Election Results
“Unless the president is unusually popular, the party holding the White House will suffer significant losses in off-year elections” is a very well-established pattern, so nothing about the Democratic ...
honestgraft.substack.com
When party ID outweighs #policy, what’s left to debate? “For a lot of people who are partisans, their identity as a partisan is more central to them than their position on most policy issues," says @davehopkins.bsky.social . From @zeeshanaleem.bsky.social of @msnbc.com ⤵️
Opinion | What Democrats’s debate on ‘oligarchy’ is really about
Sen. Elissa Slotkin's aversion to using "oligarchy" summarizes the Dems’ crisis.
msnbc.com
Understanding the diploma divide @davehopkins.bsky.social & I were on the The Vital Center podcast in a first-of-it's-kind @niskanencenter.bsky.social pod crossover event! www.niskanencenter.org/understandin...
Understanding the diploma divide, with Matt Grossmann and Dave Hopkins - Niskanen Center
In this podcast discussion, Grossmann and Hopkins argue that educated liberals are winning the culture war.
niskanencenter.org
"The best work of quantitative social science I have read in many years." George Hawley reviews @mattgrossmann.bsky.social and @davehopkins.bsky.social's "Polarized by Degrees." lawliberty.org/book-review/...
The Diploma Divide – George Hawley
Education has become one of the most defining differences between America's political parties.
lawliberty.org
The “diploma divide” is a driver of U.S. polarization, according to Political Science Professor @davehopkins.bsky.social, co-author of a new book on the subject, who discusses it on California public radio's @kqednews.bsky.social. bit.ly/DiplomaDivide...
How the ‘Diploma Divide’ Polarizes the U.S. Electorate | KQED
We'll talk to David Hopkins about our education divide and its political impacts. His new book, with co-author Matt Grossman, is "Polarized by Degrees."
bit.ly
The best explanation of our current politics I’ve come across is in a new book: Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics. We talk to co-author @davehopkins.bsky.social in the latest @haveyouheard.bsky.social on.soundcloud.com/uzUNxzwzmueB...
#190 Degrees of Separation
Our biggest political divide these days isn’t race or gender but education - and that division is only getting worse. We talk to the co-author of a new book that offers the single best explanation we’
on.soundcloud.com
This is great news for us at BC as well! bsky.app/profile/klun...
Krissy Lunz Trujillo@klunztrujillo.bsky.social · 2y agoNow that the term is officially over, I'm delighted to announce that I'll be starting as an AP of American Politics at Boston College's poli sci department next summer! I'm really excited for this new chapter, and my family and I are looking forward to being back in Boston. 1/2
Ken Kersch was a wonderful colleague and an exceptional teacher and scholar. It's a very sad time for all of us at BC and we'll miss him terribly.
I am among the many professional colleagues quoted in Tom Edsall's latest NY Times column on the future of the Democratic Party after 2024: www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/o...
. @mattgrossmann.bsky.social / @davehopkins.bsky.social examine how “culturally progressive technocracy” is sparking a backlash that’s reshaped conservative politics along the way. hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/the-rise-o...
The rise of the caps and gowns
How education is transforming culture and culture is transforming politics
hypertext.niskanencenter.org
This week, @mattgrossmann.bsky.social and I appeared on the 538 Politics podcast, discussing the partisan diploma divide and our new book Polarized by Degrees. Watch a video clip below and find the complete episode in your podcast app of choice: abcnews.go.com/538/video/ed...
Video Is education the main dividing line in U.S. politics? | 538 Politics podcast
538’s Galen Druke and professors Matt Grossman and David Hopkins discuss the Diploma Divide and whether college degrees have become a deciding factor in political affiliation.
abcnews.go.com
In the 2024 Elections, It's a Man's Man's Man's Republican Party: honestgraft.substack.com/p/in-the-202...
In the 2024 Elections, It's a Man's Man's Man's Republican Party
One of the most important consequences of Donald Trump's political ascendance in 2016 was the effect it had on the political engagement of women.
honestgraft.substack.com
I've written about the "diploma divide" in White political behavior from a variety of angles, but I think once the dust settles from the 2024 election people will accept educational attainment is the *dominant* cleavage among White Americans. fs.wp.odu.edu/jzingher/pub...
Journal Articles | Joshua ZingherJournal Articles | Joshua Zingher
(2022) "Diploma Divide: Educational Attainment and the Realignment of the American Electorate," forthcoming in Political Research Quarterly Educ ...
fs.wp.odu.edu
Just published today in Governing magazine, @mattgrossmann.bsky.social and I have a new article identifying the ways that the diploma divide is redefining American politics. It's a distillation of the argument in our new book Polarized by Degrees: www.governing.com/magazine/the...
The Most Important Divide in American Politics
Democrats receive increasing levels of support from college-educated Americans, but this has triggered a populist backlash and sharpened polarization.
governing.com
I'm thrilled that Polarized by Degrees, my new book with @mattgrossmann.bsky.social, is now available! We explain how the rise of the "Educultural Realignment" in the 21st century has redefined the American parties' constituencies, policies & styles of governing: www.cambridge.org/us/universit...
Post-Debate Wrap Up: Not Much to Learn, But a Clear Story Forms honestgraft.substack.com/p/post-debat...
Post-Debate Wrap Up: Not Much to Learn, But a Clear Story Forms
1.
honestgraft.substack.com
Polarized by Degrees is here! For #APSA2024 attendees, we have an Authors Meet Critics panel with @juliaazari.bsky.social, Suzanne Mettler & Josh Zingher today at 10:00 am in Loews Hotel Commonwealth C, and @mattgrossmann.bsky.social & I will be signing books Friday at 3:30 at the Cambridge UP booth
Democratic Convention Wrap-Up: 16 Years Later, It's Still Obama's Party: honestgraft.substack.com/p/democratic...
Democratic Convention Wrap-Up: 16 Years Later, It's Still Obama's Party
In both substance and style, Democrats partied like it's 2008
honestgraft.substack.com
What the Tim Walz Pick Tells Us About Kamala Harris: open.substack.com/pub/honestgr...
What the Tim Walz Pick Tells Us About Kamala Harris
Like other presidential candidates in the past, she's thinking about more than just winning the election.
open.substack.com
Honest Graft: Did Dumping Biden Make the Democrats Un-Democratic? Yes...and No open.substack.com/pub/honestgr...
Did Dumping Biden Make the Democrats Un-Democratic? Yes...and No
Is democracy served when violating established procedural norms actually gives most citizens what they want?
open.substack.com
Honest Graft: Biden Decides to Drop Out: The View from Political Science honestgraft.substack.com/p/biden-deci...
Biden Decides to Drop Out: The View from Political Science
What can we learn about politics from another unprecedented event?
honestgraft.substack.com