G. Elliott Morris

G. Elliott Morris is an American data journalist for The Economist. He is best known for his work on election polling and predictive analytics.

G. Elliott Morris
Born
George Elliott Morris
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Texas at Austin
OccupationData Journalist; election forecaster
EmployerThe Economist
Websitegelliottmorris.com

Early life

Morris graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, with undergraduate degrees in government and history.[1] While still an undergrad, Morris became the "breakout star of the 2018 election"[2] for his project models correctly predicting that the Democrats would regain the House.

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".[3] 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.[4]

In March 2020, Morris and The Economist published a 2020 United States presidential election forecast,[5] the first major model predicting the election's outcome. 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?"[6]

Feud with Nate Silver

Morris had a public feud with Nate Silver, leading to Silver blocking him on Twitter.[7]

Bibliography
  • No Margin for Error (2021)[8]

See also

References
  1. "G. Elliott Morris (Data) Journalist". Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  2. Golshan, Tara; Nilsen, Ella (1 June 2018). "How a 21-year-old college senior became the breakout star of 2018 election forecasting". Vox.
  3. Arthur, Rob (14 February 2020). "Pollsters got it wrong in the 2016 election. Now they want another shot". MIT Technology Review.
  4. Hall, Richard. "Should you trust the polls in 2020? Here's what pollsters have to say". The Independent.
  5. "Forecasting the US Election". The Economist.
  6. Goodman, Mike (12 August 2020). "How to Forecast the Most Unpredictable Election Season in Decades". GQ.
  7. Zeitlin, Matthew (15 October 2020). "Nerd Wars - Nate Siler and G. Elliott Morris are trying to make sense of the 2020 election -- and each other". New York.
  8. "I'm writing a book about polls and democracy". 24 June 2020.
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