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David Shor

David Shor (born 1991)^[1] is an American data scientist and political consultant known for analyzing political polls.^[2] He serves as head of data science with Blue Rose Research^[1]inNew York City,^[3] and is a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.^[4] Shor describes himself as a socialist and advised a number of liberal political action committees during the 2020 United States elections.^[5][6]

Shor grew up in Miami, Florida, in a Sephardic Jewish family.^[7] He holds a mathematics degree from Florida International University.^[8] Shor was a precocious child and gifted in mathematics, starting his undergraduate degree at the age of 13 and finishing at the age of 17.^[9] Shor was awarded the Math in Moscow scholarship in fall 2009.^[10]

Shor joined the Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign at the age of 20,^[11] working on the Chicago-based team that tracked internal and external polls and developed forecasts.^[12] The team Shor worked with developed a polling forecasting model, known as "The Golden Report",^[13] that projected Obama's vote share within one percentage point in eight of the nine battleground states.^[14] New York Magazine described Shor as the "in-house Nate Silver" of the Obama campaign.^[5][15]

Post-MLK-assasination [sic] race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests *increase* Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage. http://omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf

May 28, 2020^[16]

Shor then worked as a senior data scientist with Civis Analytics in Chicago^[9] for seven years,^[17] where he operated the company's web-based survey.^[18] On May 28, 2020, Shor tweeted a summary of an academic study by Omar Wasow, a black political scientist at Princeton University, that argued riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination likely tipped the 1968 presidential electioninRichard Nixon's favor.^[19] Some critics argued that Shor's tweet, which was posted during the height of the George Floyd protests, could be interpreted as criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.^[20] Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine that "At least some employees and clients on Civis Analytics complained that Shor’s tweet threatened their safety."^[21] Shor apologized for the tweet on May 29, and he was fired from Civis Analytics a few days later.^[21]

Shor's firing has been cited as an example of "the excesses of so-called cancel culture."^[22][23] Political scientist and journalist Yascha Mounk wrote that Shor had been "punished for doing something that most wouldn’t even consider objectionable."^[24] Vox editor and columnist Matthew Yglesias condemned the idea『that it’s categorically wrong for a person — or at least a white person — to criticize on tactical or other grounds anything being done in the name of racial justice,』which he claimed was common among Shor's progressive critics.^[25]

Since 2020, his work at Blue Rose Research aims to develop a data-based model to predict the outcome of future elections on the basis of simulations, designed in particular to advise the Democratic Partyincampaign strategies.^[26] Shor is an advocate for what he terms "popularism", the idea that Democrats should campaign on a strategy of focusing on issues that enjoy electoral popularity, such as focusing on economic issues over polarizing social and cultural issues.^[26][27] Some political analysts, including Michael Podhorzer, have criticized his work for a lack of transparency regarding his methods and data sources.^[26]

• Levitz, Eric (July 17, 2020). "David Shor's Unified Theory of American Politics". Intelligencer. Retrieved March 3, 2021.

• David ShoronX
• Website of Blue Rose Research
• "Noah Smith interviews David Shor", an hour-long interview with Bloomberg opinion writer Noah Smith