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Local Political Expert — Elections Forecasting & Political Risk

Mercor Contract, part-time 8 openings US, UK, EU, CA, AU, NZ

Listed pay: $100 to 200 / hr

What the posting lists, in US dollars an hour.

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Before you apply

Details from this posting, and how Mercor screens and pays.

  • LocationRemote, open to US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ & Western Europe
  • ScreeningAssessments and an AI interview of about 20 minutes. See what to expect
  • How Mercor paysWeekly, on Wednesdays, via Stripe. What Mercor does not say
  • PayoutsMercor's website says it pays out over $4M a day (read 5 Oct 2026)

Checked today

Source: Mercor

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Role details

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.

From the Mercor posting.

Applying on Mercor

What happens after you click

  1. The link opens this role on Mercor. Sign up and apply from there.
  2. Upload a resume, complete the assessments the role asks for and verify your work authorisation.
  3. An AI interview of about 20 minutes. The confirmation screen then shows the expected timeline for that role.
  4. If Mercor hires you, you are paid weekly, on the Wednesday after each work week, via Stripe. Mercor says first payouts are held for 7 days.
  5. The work is paid by the hour at $100–200 an hour as listed.
  6. Remote — open to United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Liechtenstein and Monaco.
Apply on Mercor Prepare for the interview

If you're hired through a link here and start paid work, Mercor pays this site a referral fee. Your pay is unaffected.

Red Pen Jobs is independent. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for Mercor in any way, and we do not recruit on its behalf.

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