Rate My Professor David Wiltse

Wiltse earned his Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, M.A. in 1996 from California State University, Fullerton, and B.A. in 1993 from Montana State University. His research focuses on public health—particularly vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 attitudes and mitigation behaviors—alongside American politics, political parties, elections, and campaign finance. He has received the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Outstanding Researcher of the Year in Social Science in 2022 and 2025, and delivered the Sewrey Faculty Colloquium on Research lecture in 2020. Key publications include “Political partisanship and trust in government predict popular support for COVID-19 vaccine mandates for various professions and demographic groups: A research note” (American Politics Research, 2023, with Filip Viskupič); “Age and partisan self-identification predict uptake of additional COVID-19 booster doses: Evidence from a longitudinal study” (Preventive Medicine Reports, 2023, with Filip Viskupič); “Typologies of Party Finance Systems: A Comparative Study of How Countries Regulate Party Finance and Their Institutional Foundations” (2019); “Subsidizing Equality: Female Candidate Emergence and Clean Elections” (2018); and “Money That Draws No Interest: Public Financing of Legislative Elections and Candidate Emergence” (2015). His contributions through polling and scholarship influence understandings of political impacts on public health and elections.