5D AGO

Local Political Expert — Elections Forecasting & Political Risk

Mercor / Local Political Expert

RATE

$150-$250/HR

LOCATION

REMOTE (GLOBAL)

More Mercor jobs Law & Legal STEM & PhD Finance

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DESCRIPTION

Local Political Expert — Elections Forecasting & Political Risk We are building expert-authored forecasting and research data used to evaluate and improve AI models on real political and financial analysis. Each task asks a practitioner to reason from a fixed evidence cutoff — no hindsight — and document the judgment a strong analyst would have made at that moment. This role covers political report authorship: elections, polling, and political-risk events. What you will do Author point-in-time political reports and forecasts from a stated evidence cutoff Make and document directional judgments about polling, win probabilities, and market-implied odds Explain the causal mechanism behind an event's expected political and market impact Review model-generated analyses and grade them against your own standard Who we are looking for Local political analysts with hands-on experience on specific races in swing states: current or upcoming Senate, governor, or statewide contests, or recent cycles in the same state On-the-ground knowledge of the electorate, the candidates, and the local political environment, from roles such as university political scientist, state or regional pollster, state-level campaign or party analytics staff, or state political-risk analyst A record of making live judgments about polling, win probabilities, or odds in those races — not retrospective commentary Strong polling literacy and causal event analysis Typically 8+ years of direct experience, or unusually strong evidence of equivalent performance Backgrounds we look at first: political science departments and survey research centers at universities in the target states, state and regional pollsters, state-level campaign and party analytics teams, and decision desks or race-ratings outlets with state-specific coverage. National forecasting or political-risk experience is welcome when paired with deep knowledge of a specific state. Brand-name experience is a strong first-pass signal but is not a hard

REQUIREMENTS

▸— direct experience and performance on the work sample determine who qualifies.
▸Not a fit
▸Profiles whose experience is mainly international politics, geopolitics, or country risk, with little or no work on US races
▸Analysts who have not worked on a current or recent US race in the state they would cover
▸Pure communications or journalism profiles without demonstrated forecasting, polling, or probabilistic judgment
▸Academic profiles whose work is purely theoretical, with no analysis of live races
▸Point-in-time discipline
▸Every task is graded on reasoning from the stated cutoff without hindsight, data leakage, confidential information, or material non-public information.