Local Political Expert (Maine)

**Pay:** $100-$200 per hour (USD). ## 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.