Local Political Expert — Elections Forecasting & Political Risk
MercorLegit · not rated yetPosted on 21 Sep 2026
Pay: $100–200/hr
- Who can apply
- Open only to people in Canada, United States
- Hours
- 20 hrs/week · Contract
- Where
- Remote, work from home
- Job type
- Expert (SME) review
- Openings
- 1 opening
At a glance: A contract, remote expert (SME) review job with Mercor. It pays $100–200/hr for 20 hours a week. Only people in Canada and United States can apply.
What happens after you click Apply
- You leave AI Trainer HQ and go to Mercor’s own site.
- Upload your résumé on work.mercor.com
- Confirm your work authorization
- Sit the AI interview, which takes about 20 minutes
- Complete any written assessment attached to the listing
- On receiving an offer, sign it, configure payouts and verify your identity
How this pay compares
This job pays more than 88% of the 134 other finance & accounting jobs on the board that state pay; 10% pay more.
- This job
- $150/hrMiddle of $100–200/hr
- Median on Mercor
- $80/hrFrom 305 other paid jobs
- Median in finance & accounting
- $75/hrFrom 134 other paid jobs
Requirements
- Qualifications
- 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
- 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
- Languages
- English
- Equipment
- Computer with a reliable internet connection
About this job
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
• 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 requirement — 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.
Listing history
- First seen on our board
- (11 days ago)
- Posted by Mercor
- Last checked
- Source
- Mercor
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