← all roles

Mercornew this week

Political Expert — Elections Forecasting & Political Risk

Pay
$150–$250/hr
Type
Hourly
Spots left
10
Location
Remote
Posted
September 14, 2026

Good fit for: scientists, researchers, and PhD holders in STEM fields.

Apply via referral →

Listing verified on the platform’s official board. Last checked September 25, 2026.

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.

Applying via Mercor: Mercor pays twice a week once you are hired and billing work. Sign-up is free; expect a resume upload and an AI interview before matching.

Apply via referral →

Similar live roles

Mercor
Voice Actor: CX Agent Voice Cloning (South African English)
$50–$100/hr
Mercor
African & Afrikaans-Accented English Experts
$15–$20/hr
Mercor
Cybersecurity Practitioner: Paid Expert Interviews (SOC, Incident Response, Detection, AppSec)
$125–$175/hr
Mercor
Cybersecurity Practitioner: Paid Expert Interviews (SOC, Incident Response, Detection, AppSec)
$125–$175/hr