D. Sunshine Hillygus, Professor

Contact Info:

Teaching (Fall 2026):

• POLSCI 201.01, PUBLIC OPINION Synopsis

  Gross Hall 304B, TuTh 10:05 AM-11:20 AM

Education:

Ph.D., Stanford University, 2003

M.A., Stanford University, 2000

Specialties:

American Politics
Political Institutions
Behavior & Identities
Methods
Political Communication

Research Interests:

Professor Hillygus has published widely on the topics of American political behavior, campaigns and elections, survey methods, public opinion, and information technology and politics. She is co-author of The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Political Campaigns (Princeton University Press, 2008) and The Hard Count: The Social and Political Challenges of the 2000 Census (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). From 2003-2009, she taught at Harvard University, where she was the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government and founding director of the Program on Survey Research.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Tyler, M; Hillygus, DS; DeBell, M; Brader, T; Iyengar, S; Shaw, D; Valentino, NA, Why are surveys struggling to estimate vote shares?, American Journal of Political Science (January, 2026) [doi]  [abs].
2. Alqabandi, F; Tierney, G; Bail, C; Hillygus, DS; Volfovsky, A, Experiments offering social media users the choice to avoid toxic political content, New Media and Society (January, 2026) [doi]  [abs].
3. Guggenheim, L; Valentino, NA; Hupp, AL; DeBell, M; Hillygus, DS; Shaw, DR, Understanding Nonresponse in Live Video Survey Interviews: Evidence from Two Tests Conducted as Part of the American National Election Studies (ANES), METHODS DATA ANALYSES, vol. 20 no. 1 (2026), pp. 41 pages [doi] .
4. Tang, J; Hillygus, DS; Reiter, JP, Using Auxiliary Marginal Distributions in Imputations for Nonresponse while Accounting for Survey Weights, with Application to Estimating Voter Turnout, Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, vol. 12 no. 1 (February, 2024), pp. 155-182, Oxford University Press (OUP) [doi]  [abs].
5. Shandhi, MMH; Singh, K; Janson, N; Ashar, P; Singh, G; Lu, B; Hillygus, DS; Maddocks, JM; Dunn, JP, Assessment of ownership of smart devices and the acceptability of digital health data sharing., NPJ digital medicine, vol. 7 no. 1 (February, 2024), pp. 44 [doi]  [abs].