Elliott Morris is a data journalist at The Economist, based in Washington, DC. He writes mostly about American politics and elections, usually by engaging in a close study of political science, political polling and demographic data. He is responsible for many of the paper’s election forecasting models, including its 2020 US presidential election forecast. He also writes the paper’s “Checks and Balance” newsletter on US politics.
Elliott graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2018. He worked the Pew Research Center, and the election returns startup, Decision Desk HQ and joined The Economist in 2018 Broadly speaking, he is interested in ways to better understand the world using statistics, social science methods, data, and predictive models and is a firm believer in the power of public opinion polling to improve democratic outcomes.
His book, Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them, is a look at polling, its history, influence, successes, failures, and future — and an argument for why it is a crucial tool for a healthy democracy.