Elections Analyst

The Election Analytics team at The New York Times is hiring an elections analyst to contribute to its data-driven coverage of American elections, including The New York Times/Siena College Poll, polling averages and the election night forecast model known as The Needle.

In this role, you will become one of the country’s foremost elections experts, with a keen understanding of American politics, elections and voting patterns in both past and upcoming elections. You will combine that knowledge with technical and statistical skills to ensure The Times’s election analytics work remains at the forefront of the field. And you will help create novel analyses that explain to our readers phenomena that they can’t learn about anywhere else.

One central focus of your job will be to estimate likely turnout and vote choice, whether for use in weighting a Times/Siena poll or in the “baseline” estimates that underpin The Needle. These estimates are derived from the voter file, a list that contains all voters in the country and various information on demographics and participation in past elections.

This is a collaborative and interdisciplinary role. You'll work with The Times’s chief political analyst, statisticians, journalists and developers to process and analyze nearly every kind of data about American elections, from voter registration files to election results at the precinct by method level. You’ll work with reporters and editors to tell our readers what to expect before an election and to shape the story of why Americans voted as they did afterward.

To succeed, you will need to be skilled at harnessing and making sense of the data you have available and explaining it to others. You will need to be an experienced writer, statistician and R developer; if you lack any of those skills you should have a plan to grow in all of those areas. If you do not already have an opinion on how a county or demographic group is likely to vote in an upcoming election, you should be excited to develop one.

You should be prepared to work irregular hours in a high-pressure environment in the run-up to a competitive election. This is an in-office position and includes regular attendance in the office four days each week. There may be some flexibility to work remotely per your departmental guidance. New York is preferred, but Washington, D.C., will be considered. 

To apply, please include a cover letter of no more than 500 words that …

• summarizes a unique analysis for which you are responsible that you think provides insight into how you think and work (the analysis does not need to have been published publicly or in a formal setting); and

• speaks to your level of interest in understanding and analyzing the data that is fundamental to this role

Responsibilities:

• Build and shape statistical models that estimate turnout and vote choice of individuals, geographic units, demographic and political groups, and the overall electorate
• Help maintain the voter registration files that underpin Times/Siena polling and our election night forecasts
• Work on the design and weighting of political surveys, including The New York Times/Siena College Poll
• Help build and expand our polling averages
• Contribute original analyses of polls, voter registration trends and recent election results for articles or graphics
• Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.
• You will report to the Director, Election Data Analytics. 

Basic Qualifications: 

• 2+ years of professional or educational experience
• Demonstrated ability as a strong analytical thinker
• Proficiency with a language such as R, Python or Stata
• Excellent communication and organizational skills 
• Familiarity with data used for analyzing elections and voting trends, such as pre-election polling, census data, election results or voter file data
• Knowledge of prior research on American politics, demographics and election results

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Proficiency in R
• Experience with statistical techniques used for analyzing political data, like multilevel regression and poststratification, ecological inference and survey design and weighting
• Experience building statistical models
• Experience working on a multidisciplinary team
• Experience producing analytical content in any form

This position is represented by the NewsGuild of NY.

REQ-018303