Rate My Professor David Wiltse

Dr. David Wiltse serves as Professor of Political Science in the School of American and Global Studies at South Dakota State University (SDSU). He joined SDSU in 2013 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019, and to full Professor in 2024. Additionally, he is the Director of The South Dakota Polling Project, which he co-founded with Filip Viskupič in 2020. This project conducts biannual polls of the South Dakota electorate on pressing issues such as sales tax on groceries, recreational marijuana, and top-two primaries, and supplies data for transdisciplinary research published in fields including political science, public health, sociology, psychology, pharmacy, biology, nursing, and medicine. Before arriving at SDSU, Wiltse served as Assistant Professor at Briar Cliff University from 2010 to 2013, Visiting Assistant Professor at TOBB Economic and Technical University in Ankara, Turkey in 2012, and Doctor Lecturer at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey from 2006 to 2010.

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.