David Shor

American political data scientist (born 1991)

This article is about the American political consultant. For the television writer, see David Shore.

David Shor

Born| 1991 (age 32-33)
Nationality| American
Alma mater| Florida International University
Occupations|

* Data scientist
* political consultant

Employers|

* Civis Analytics
* OpenLabs

Political party| Democratic Party

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] in New 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]

## Early life[edit]

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]

## Career[edit]

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]

> (((David Shor))) | Twitter
> 
|

> @davidshor

> 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 election in Richard 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 Party in campaign 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]

## References[edit]

1. ^ a b "David Shor". Twitter. Retrieved October 12, 2021.
2. ^ Levitz, Eric (March 3, 2021). "David Shor on Why Trump Was Good for the GOP – and How Dems Can Win in 2022". Intelligencer. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
3. ^ "David Shor's Postmortem of the 2020 Election". www.msn.com. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
4. ^ "David Shor". Center for American Progress Action. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
5. ^ a b Levitz, Eric (July 17, 2020). "David Shor's Unified Theory of American Politics". Intelligencer. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
6. ^ Garrison, Joey; Morin, Rebecca (November 24, 2020). "'Almost Impossible': As Education Divide Deepens, Democrats Fear a Demographic Problem for Future Power". USA Today. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
7. ^ Shor, David [@davidshor] (March 7, 2016). "My sephardic Morrocan relatives don't believe me when tell them that American Jews have historically been left-wing" (Tweet). Retrieved August 13, 2021 - via Twitter.
8. ^ "See why @davidshor of @CivisAnalytics is one of @crainschicago #Crain20s". Crain's Chicago Business. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
9. ^ a b Graff, Garrett M. (June 6, 2016). "The Polls Are All Wrong. A Startup Called Civis Is Our Best Hope to Fix Them". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
10. ^ "Our Alumni List – Math in Moscow". mathinmoscow.org. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
11. ^ "One Needle to Predict Them All". Slate Magazine. January 6, 2021. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
12. ^ "See why @davidshor of @CivisAnalytics is one of @crainschicago #Crain20s". Crain's Chicago Business. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
13. ^ Newton, Ben (October 27, 2018). "An Interview with David Shor – A Master of Political Data". Medium. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
14. ^ "Data Science Seminar Series (DS3)". pages.stat.wisc.edu. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
15. ^ Lourie Cohen, Hillel (November 2, 2022). "Why U.S. Jewish Voters Are Bucking the Worldwide Trend and Still Voting Democrat". Haaretz. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
16. ^ (((David Shor))) [@davidshor] (May 28, 2020). "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. omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf" (Tweet) - via Twitter.
17. ^ "MIDAS & Dept. Political Science Co-Present: David Shor – Democratic Political Data Scientist". MIDAS. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
18. ^ Matthews, Dylan (November 10, 2020). "One Pollster's Explanation for Why the Polls Got It Wrong". Vox. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
19. ^ Mounk, Yascha (June 27, 2020). "Stop Firing the Innocent". The Atlantic. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
20. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (July 29, 2020). "The real stakes in the David Shor saga". Vox. Retrieved November 8, 2021.
21. ^ a b Chait, Jonathan (June 11, 2020). "The Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age". Intelligencer. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
22. ^ Levitz, Eric (July 17, 2020). "David Shor's Unified Theory of American Politics". New York. Archived from the original on December 12, 2023. Retrieved December 12, 2023.
23. ^ Robertson, Derek (June 5, 2021). "How Everything Became 'Cancel Culture'". Politico. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved December 12, 2023.
24. ^ Mounk, Yascha (June 27, 2020). "Stop Firing the Innocent". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on December 8, 2023. Retrieved December 12, 2023.
25. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (July 29, 2020). "The real stakes in the David Shor saga". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on October 29, 2023. Retrieved December 12, 2023.
26. ^ a b c Klein, Ezra (October 8, 2021). "David Shor Is Telling Democrats What They Don't Want to Hear". The New York Times. Retrieved October 12, 2021.
27. ^ Brownstein, Ronald (December 9, 2021). "Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 10, 2021.

## Further reading[edit]

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

## External links[edit]

* Official website
* David Shor on Twitter
* Website of Blue Rose Research
* "Noah Smith interviews David Shor", an hour-long interview with Bloomberg opinion writer Noah Smith