Dr. David Brinker is the Senior Researcher at the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education. He is primarily responsible for conducting research on voting patterns among college students, drawing on the NSLVE database and other data sources relevant to student civic life.

In addition to studying college voting, Dave researches deliberative democratic innovations and the communicative processes by which people build mutual understanding.

Dr. Brinker holds a doctorate from the Pennsylvania State University and completed his Ph.D. in 2017. His dissertation, The Relational Basis of Democratic Legitimacy, theorized and empirically tested how interpersonal relational communication may influence individual behavior in small group settings.