Daron Shaw

Daron Shaw is a senior fellow at the Civitas Institute, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Chair of State Government in the Department of Government at UT Austin. A political scientist, survey research analyst, and polling expert, Shaw has been part of several bipartisan election teams, including for the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. He has served as President George W. Bush’s representative on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and as one of the academic directors for President Barack Obama’s Commission for Election Administration.

His many affiliations include being co-director of the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, co-director of the Fox News Poll, a member of the Pew Elections Performance Index Advisory Group, and a member of the advisory boards for the MIT Election Data and Science Lab and the Ulysses S. Grant Institute (which promotes rigorous and objective study of the American electoral process).

Shaw is the author or coauthor of Battleground: Electoral College Strategies, Execution, and Impact in the Modern Era (Oxford University Press, 2024); The Appearance of Corruption: Testing the Supreme Court's Assumptions about Campaign Finance Reform (Oxford University Press, 2021); The Turnout Myth: Voting Rates and Partisan Outcomes in American National Elections (Oxford University Press, 2020); Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters ( Oxford University Press, 2008); and The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004, (University of Chicago Press, 2006). He has also been widely published in leading political science journals including in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, and British Journal of Political Science. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles.