For people who came to Washington, DC, to study political science, Decision Desk HQ’s announcement Monday that it would establish a hub at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy was exciting. Decision Desk HQ was the first organization of its type to correctly project the outcome of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, as well as the first to call the 2022 midterms, in which Democrats significantly outperformed expectations.
But the news gets better: Decision Desk HQ will not only include fellows and interns from Georgetown on its team this year. It will also hire students, at $125 per six-hour shift, to work for it on election night. “The McCourt School is really a no-brainer for us,” says Elizabeth Wilner, an adviser to the operation, which was founded to call US elections but in recent years has branched out to races in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. “Their emphasis on both ethics and data-driven public policymaking, and the caliber of their students…we were psyched about that.”
Decision Desk HQ prides itself on covering the entire ballot. Beyond races for the presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives, it reports on state legislature contests, as well as county and municipal primary contests.
Though students won’t appear on television, they will play a role in covering what is certain to be an interesting November from Georgetown’s brand-new McCourt building on Capitol Hill. Students will get “a chance to be part of history,” the school’s dean, Maria Cancian, said in a press release.
