Political Forecasting Expert (Maine) at Mercor

Political Forecasting Expert (Maine) | $100-200/hr | Remote (US)

About the work

Mercor is building expert-authored forecasting and research data used to evaluate and improve AI models on real political and financial analysis. Each task asks you 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, focused on Maine races.

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 Maine's electorate, candidates, and 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 reviewed 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 counts when paired with deep knowledge of a specific state. Brand-name experience is a strong first-pass signal but not a hard requirement — direct experience and performance on the work sample determine who qualifies.

Not a fit

• Experience mainly in international politics, geopolitics, or country risk, with little or no work on US races
• No work on a current or recent US race in the state you would cover
• Pure communications or journalism backgrounds without demonstrated forecasting, polling, or probabilistic judgment
• Purely theoretical academic work with no analysis of live races

Pay and commitment

$100-200/hr, hourly contract work.

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.