Jørgen Bølstad

Jørgen Bølstad is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, specializing in political methodology, voting behavior, and Bayesian statistics. His research focuses on developing innovative statistical models to understand political phenomena, particularly in the areas of voting behavior, public opinion, and democratic representation.

Educational Background:

• BA in Political Science from the University of Oslo
• MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics
• PhD in Political Science from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence

Bølstad has significant teaching experience in research methods and statistics at master's and PhD levels. He coordinates methods courses STV4022 and STV4032, as well as the design seminar for PhD candidates. His research interests span political psychology, voting behavior, public opinion, democratic representation, and advanced statistical modeling techniques. He is recognized as the only Norwegian researcher to have published single-authored articles in Political Analysis, the leading methods journal in political science.

His publication record demonstrates consistent methodological innovation applied to substantive political questions, with particular expertise in Bayesian statistics and voting behavior analysis. Bølstad has developed novel statistical approaches implemented in his R package hbamr for estimating ideological positions from survey data, contributing significantly to quantitative methodology in political science.

Scientific Awards and Honors:

• Member of the Academy for Young Scientists (AYF)
• Fulbright scholar at Harvard University
• Doctoral fellow at the Research Council of Norway

Bølstad maintains active public engagement through writing for major Norwegian newspapers (Aftenposten, Morgenbladet, VG, Dagbladet, Klassekampen, Dagsavisen) and frequent appearances on NRK radio and television. For the 2023 election, he developed NRK's forecasting model for election night coverage. He runs two websites: Boelstad.net (statistics and programming) and Estimite.com (political data science analysis of party support and election predictions).

He participates in research groups including Comparative Institutions and Regimes (CIR) and Political Data Science (PODS), and has contributed to projects such as 'The strategy behind the registration of representative votes in the European Parliament (StREP).'