Josh Clinton

Abby and Jon Winkelried Professor of Political Science Vanderbilt University

  • Nashville TN

Polling expert who uses statistical methods to explain political processes. Co-directs the Vanderbilt Poll.

Contact

Vanderbilt University

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Biography

Clinton (Ph.D. Political Science, M.S. Statistics, and M.A. Economics from Stanford University) uses statistical methods to better understand political processes and outcomes. He is interested in: the politics in the U.S. Congress, public opinion, campaigns and elections, and the uses and abuses of statistical methods for understanding political phenomena. His peer-reviewed publications have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the Annual Review of Political Science. He is an Editor-In-Chief for the Quarterly Journal of Political Science and he is currently serving on the Editorial Board of Journal of Public Policy. He is currently the Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and a Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Poll.

Areas of Expertise

Voters
Tennessee Politics
Polling
American Politics
Political Polls
Political Climate in Tennessee
Political Methodology
Public Opinion
Voter Behavior and Attitudes

Accomplishments

Journal of Politics Best Paper Award

2011, For “More A Molehill than a Mountain: the Effects of the Blanket Primary on Elected Officials’ Behavior From California.” With Will Bullock.

Stanley E. Kelley Teaching Award

2009, Dept. of Politics, Princeton University

Patrick J. Fett Award

2014, for “the best paper on the scientific study of Congress and the Presidency” at 2013 MPSA

Education

Stanford University

Ph.D.

Political Science

2003

Stanford University

M.S.

Statistics

2001

Stanford University

M.A.

Economics

2000

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Affiliations

  • Quarterly Journal of Political Science : Editor-In-Chief
  • Journal of Public Policy : Editorial Board Member

Selected Media Appearances

Once again, polls underestimated Trump. Experts only have a hunch why

Reuters  online

2024-11-20

Vanderbilt University political scientist Josh Clinton, who led a task force analyzing how surveys performed in the 2020 election cycle, said he was worried that the apparent mismeasurement could amplify its possible cause: public distrust of polling and of political institutions writ large.

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The Polls Were Right! But Also They Weren’t.

U.S. News & World Report  online

2024-11-12

The polls “were better than they were in the past, but they still kind of fundamentally understated Trump in a way that I think that the public won’t find particularly satisfactory,” Josh Clinton, a professor of political science and co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll at Vanderbilt University, tells me. “So to say that you got close, but you still understated Trump is like, close but no cigar.”

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Pollsters Were Blindsided by Breadth of Trump Win

The Wall Street Journal  online

2024-11-07

“Pollsters—given the crudeness of the data available to them—they weren’t horrible this time,” said Josh Clinton, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, who led a polling trade association’s postmortem in 2020. That look back found that pre-election polls were the most inaccurate in 40 years.

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Selected Articles

Who Participated in the ACA? Gains in Insurance Coverage by Political Partisanship

Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law

Michael W. Sances ; Joshua D. Clinton

2019

Context: The authors examined whether participation in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) differed by political partisanship. Answering this question is important for understanding how contentious elite-level decision making and discourse may affect policy uptake, and the ability of the ACA to create a constituency of beneficiaries invested in its support.

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Knockout Blows or the Status Quo? Momentum in the 2016 Primaries

The Journal of Politics

Joshua D. Clinton, Andrew M. Engelhardt, and Marc J. Trussler

2019

Notions of momentum loom large in accounts of presidential primaries despite imprecision about its meaning and measurement. Defining momentum as the impact election outcomes have on candidate support above and beyond existing trends and leveraging a rolling cross section of more than 325,000 interviews to examine daily changes in candidate support in the 2016 nomination contests reveal scant evidence that primary election outcomes uniquely affect respondents’ preferences over the competing candidates.

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Lawmaking in American Legislatures: an empirical investigation

Journal of Public Policy

Joshua D. Clinton and Mark D. Richardson

2019

Given pervasive gridlock at the national level, state legislatures are increasingly the place where notable policy change occurs. Investigating such change is difficult because it is often hard to characterise policy change and use observable data to evaluate theoretical predictions; it is subsequently unclear whether law-making explanations focusing on the US Congress also apply to state legislatures.

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