Political Analyst - Elections Forecasting - AI Trainer

Mercor; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is building expert-authored forecasting and research data to evaluate AI models on real political and financial analysis. The role focuses on political report authorship—elections, polling, and political-risk events.

You will craft point-in-time forecasts and document judgments with evidence cutoffs, ensuring rigorous, reproducible analysis. We seek a senior forecaster or risk analyst with a track record of live polling judgments and strong causal analysis.

Qualifications

• 8+ years direct experience in elections forecaster or related field.
• Proven record of making live judgments about polling or odds.
• Strong polling literacy and causal event analysis.
• Work sample performance determines eligibility.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Polling literacy

Live judgment

Forecasting

Causal event analysis

Job description

About the work

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

• A senior elections forecaster, campaign strategist, polling or statistical-methodology expert, or political-risk analyst
• A record of making live judgments about polling, win probabilities, or odds — 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: top national polling and election-forecasting organizations, major decision desks, senior analytics teams from presidential, Senate or governor races, and political-risk desks at leading banks, funds, or firms such as Eurasia Group and EIU. Brand-name experience is a strong first-pass signal but is not a hard requirement — direct experience and performance on the work sample determine who qualifies.

Not a fit

Pure communications, journalism, or academic profiles without demonstrated forecasting, polling, or probabilistic judgment.

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.