FiveThirtyEight is hiring an elections writer. This is a central role on our politics team heading into the 2018 and 2020 elections. It’s a job for someone who can help us execute and build on some of the things that FiveThirtyEight is best known for. Here’s what we’re looking for:
- Several years of experience writing and reporting on federal and state elections in a data-driven way for a wide audience.
- A demonstrated aptitude both to write quickly off the news and to ask critical, big-picture questions about the elections you’re covering,
- Experience working with data analysis and visualization tools such as R or Stata.
- Demonstrated expertise in U.S. political history — particularly electoral history.
- High proficiency with voting, polling and demographic data.
- Statistical modeling skills are not an absolute requirement but are a major plus.
- Traditional reporting skills are not an absolute requirement but are a major plus.
The elections writer’s focus will be on producing several short pieces each week, but this person will also collaborate on bigger political features and interactive graphics and possibly on FiveThirtyEight’s election models. New York or Washington, D.C., location (or willingness to move to one of these locations) is preferred but not required. It’ll be a hectic, fun and exciting job — we can promise that much.
If interested, please send inquiries to contact@fivethirtyeight.com with the phrase “Elections Writer” in the subject line.