David P. Redlawsk

David P. Redlawsk, Ph.D., is James R. Soles Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. Previously, he was Director, Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling and Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ (2009-2016) and a professor at the University of Iowa from 1999-2009. From 2018-2019 he served as President of the International Society of Political Psychology.

Prof. Redlawsk received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Rutgers University. He also holds an M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University and a B.A. from Duke University. His research focuses on campaign, elections, the role of information in voter decision making and on emotional responses to campaign information. He has received several grants to support his research from the National Science Foundation, and he served on the Board of the American National Election Studies from 2009-2014.

Prof. Redlawsk's most recent book is A Citizen's Guide to the Political Psychology of Voter Decision Making (Routlege, 2020), with Michael W. Habegger. The volume reviews a wide range of research on voting, including updates to the 2006 book, How Voters Decide, and expanded discussion of Social Identity and Emotions in voting.

With Kyle Mattes, he is author of The Positive Case for Negative Campaigning (University of Chicago Press 2014). In this book, he argues that negative campaigning is a positive for democracy, injecting important information into the political environment that voters could and would not otherwise infer if it were suppressed. The book uses multiple methods to address the informational value for voters of attack advertising.

Other books include Why Iowa?: Sequential Elections, Reform and U.S. Presidential Nominations published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010 (with Caroline Tolbert and Todd Donovan) and How Voters Decide: Information Processing in an Election Campaign, (with Richard Lau) published by Cambridge University Press and winner of the 2007 Alexander George Award for best Book in Political Psychology from the International Society of Political Psychology.

In addition, he has edited four books: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Political Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 2021), Feeling Politics: Emotion in Political Information Processing (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006); Civic Service: Service Learning with State and Local Government Partners (with Tom Rice) (Josey-Bass, 2009) and The American Governor: Power, Constraint, and Leadership in The States (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015.)

Prof. Redlawsk's research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and the American Journal of Political Science, as well as the journal Political Psychology among others. He has served as co-editor of the journal Political Psychology and as a member of the Governing Council of the International Society of Political Psychology and as a Vice-president of the Society. He was chair of the Political Psychology Organized Section of the American Political Science Association for 2009-2010.

In addition, Prof. Redlawsk is interested in civic engagement and service-learning pedagogies. He is editor (with Tom Rice) of Civic Service: Service-Learning with State and Local Government Partners published in 2009 by Jossey-Bass which highlights a number of exemplary service-learning projects across institutions and disciplines, all of which partner with local or state government providing reciprocal value to students and government agencies. Redlawsk teaches courses including Survey Research, Local Politics, Political Campaigning, Voting Behavior, Political Psychology, Decision Making, and Experimental Methods.