Jeongho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at The University of Iowa, with plans to defend his dissertation in the spring of 2025. His research focuses on comparative politics, public opinion, and political behavior, particularly exploring populism, political representation, public support for democracy, and democratic backsliding. Methodologically, he utilizes various quantitative methods, including multilevel modeling, computational text analysis, and machine learning. His research has been published or is forthcoming in several journals, including International Migration Review and Democratization.

His dissertation investigates how issue congruence between the public and political parties influences public support for populism in different regions. He argues that public support for populism is a response to discontent with contemporary democratic systems. He also examines how individuals’ diverse perceptions of democracy moderate their susceptibility to populist appeals, given that populism claims to restore “true” democracy.

He has received various scholarships and fellowships, including the Graduate College Summer Fellowship at the University of Iowa, the Scholarship for Political Science Research at ICPSR, and the Scholarship for The Swedish Interdisciplinary Research School in Computational Social Science at The Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS) in Sweden.

He serves on the Steering Committee of the Young Scholars Initiative on Populism (OPUS), a division within the international research network in populism studies, Team Populism. He holds an M.A. and a B.A. (Graduated with High Distinction) in Political Science from Kyung Hee University, South Korea.