Daniel Weitzel

He is a political scientist specializing in democracy, democratic backsliding, negative campaigning, and the strategic behavior of political actors in elections. His research examines how political parties and voters interact within democratic systems, and how these dynamics shape the quality and resilience of democratic governance.

Methodologically, he employs quantitative approaches—including machine learning, text analysis, and causal inference—to study questions at the intersection of political behavior, institutions, and democratic accountability.

Before joining Central European University in 2026, he was a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and a faculty affiliate at the Data Science Research Institute at Colorado State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Government and an M.Sc. in Statistics from the University of Texas at Austin, and he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna from 2020 to 2022.