| G. Elliott Morris | |
| Birth Name: | George Elliott Morris |
| Birth Date: | 7 June 1996 |
| Education: | University of Texas at Austin (BA) |
| Occupation: | Data journalist Election forecaster |
| Employer: | The Economist ABC News |
George Elliott Morris (born June 7, 1996) is an American data journalist who is best known for his work on election polling and predictive analytics. From 2018 to 2023, Morris was a data journalist for The Economist. In 2023, he became the editorial director of data analytics at ABC News including FiveThirtyEight.
Morris was born in 1996.[1] [2] He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, with undergraduate degrees in government and history.[3] While still an undergraduate, Morris became the "breakout star of the 2018 election" for his project models correctly predicting that the Democrats would regain the House.[1]
After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Morris began working for The Economist. In February 2020, Morris referred to bad 2016 U.S. presidential election predictions as "lying to people" and "editorial malpractice".[4] He later said that polls in 2016 did not account for education, meaning college educated voters were over-represented, which overstated the lead that Hillary Clinton actually had.[5]
In March 2020, Morris and The Economist published a forecast for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the first major model predicting the election's outcome.[6] On August 1, 2020, his model gave Joe Biden an 87 percent chance of winning the election, drawing criticism from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight who said: "I am not necessarily convinced. It's not just that polls could move. It's a question of, like, how well can pollsters predict turnout when the mechanics of voting have really changed?"[7] Morris has had a public feud with Silver, leading to Silver blocking him on Twitter.[8]
In May 2023, ABC News hired Morris to lead FiveThirtyEight as editorial director of data analytics following Silver's exit from the site.[9]