G. Elliott Morris

George Elliott Morris (born 1996)[1][2] is an American data journalist who is best known for his work on election polling and predictive analytics. From 2018 to 2023, Morris was a data journalist for The Economist. In 2023, he became the editorial director of data analytics at ABC News including FiveThirtyEight.

G. Elliott Morris
Born
George Elliott Morris

1996 (age 26–27)
EducationUniversity of Texas at Austin (BA)
Occupation(s)Data journalist
Election forecaster
Employer(s)The Economist
ABC News
WebsiteOfficial website

Early life

Morris graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, with undergraduate degrees in government and history.[3] While still an undergrad, Morris became the "breakout star of the 2018 election" for his project models correctly predicting that the Democrats would regain the House.[1]

Career

After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Morris began working for The Economist. In February 2020, Morris referred to bad 2016 election predictions as "lying to people" and "editorial malpractice".[4] He later said that polls in 2016 did not account for education, meaning college educated voters were over-represented, which overstated the lead that Hillary Clinton actually had.[5]

In March 2020, Morris and The Economist published a forecast for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the first major model predicting the election's outcome.[6] On August 1, his model gave Joe Biden an 87 percent chance of winning the election, drawing criticism from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, who said, "I am not necessarily convinced. It's not just that polls could move. It's a question of, like, how well can pollsters predict turnout when the mechanics of voting have really changed?"[7] Morris has had a public feud with Silver, leading to Silver blocking him on Twitter.[8]

In May 2023, ABC News hired Morris to lead FiveThirtyEight as editorial director of data analytics following Silver's exit from the site.[9]

Bibliography
  • Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them (2022)[10]

See also

References
  1. Golshan, Tara (2018-06-01). "How a 21-year-old college senior became the breakout star of 2018 election forecasting". Vox. Retrieved 2023-05-21.
  2. "G. Elliott Morris Twitterissä: "two thoughts: i) being born in 1996 has many perks, but i really feel like i missed out on the good days of the internet here ii) historical research (eg, on polls or political blogging, &c) is vastly easier now thanks to web archives and digitized records"". 2021-02-28. Archived from the original on 2021-02-28. Retrieved 2023-05-21.
  3. "G. Elliott Morris (Data) Journalist". Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  4. Arthur, Rob (14 February 2020). "Pollsters got it wrong in the 2016 election. Now they want another shot". MIT Technology Review.
  5. Hall, Richard (7 October 2020). "Should you trust the polls in 2020? Here's what pollsters have to say". The Independent.
  6. "Forecasting the US Election". The Economist.
  7. Goodman, Mike (12 August 2020). "How to Forecast the Most Unpredictable Election Season in Decades". GQ.
  8. Zeitlin, Matthew (15 October 2020). "Nerd Wars - Nate Silver and G. Elliott Morris are trying to make sense of the 2020 election -- and each other". New York.
  9. Stieb, Matt (2023-05-19). "A Brutal Wonk Swap at FiveThirtyEight". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2023-05-21.
  10. "G. Elliott Morris". gelliottmorris.com.
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