Joshua D. Clinton

Abby and Jon Winkelried Chair
Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University
Co-Director, Vanderbilt Poll & Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

Josh Clinton is the Abby and Jon Winkelried Chair and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He co-directs the Vanderbilt Poll and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, sits on the executive board of the Data Science Institute, and is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. He is a fellow at the Center for Effective Lawmaking and at the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Electoral Studies, and a three-time Emmy-nominated Senior Election Analyst for NBC News, where he helps make election-night projections.

He chaired the American Association for Public Opinion Research task force on pre-election polling in the 2020 election and served on the 2016 task force. On the American Political Science Association’s task force on artificial intelligence, he led the work on public opinion. He studies elections, public opinion, political institutions, and lawmaking using statistical methods. Recently, he was named a 2024 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and received Vanderbilt’s 2026 Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor Award.

He received graduate degrees in Political Science (Ph.D.), Statistics (M.S.), and Economics (M.A.) from Stanford University, after graduating with double majors in Political Science and Economics from the University of Rochester.