Chad Day named chief elections analyst

In this new role, Chad, based in Washington, will serve alongside Election Decision Editor Stephen Ohlemacher as one of the senior editors who conducts the final review of AP race calls before we declare winners. He’ll partner with elections data scientist Serena Hawkins on building the tools we need to make those race calls accurately and swiftly. He will also contribute to our growing efforts across the bureau and within the News division to explain the how and the why behind those race calls – and to developing new and innovative ways to tell that piece of the story. He’ll partner with Aaron Kessler and other members of the data journalism team to do so, as well as our new and expanding team focused on telling stories on APNews.com and social media.

Chad’s return is squarely part of AP’s ongoing investment in our work covering elections and playing our unique role in the American democracy, and he can’t get here soon enough as we spend this year preparing for the presidential primaries and next year’s general election. Chad rejoins AP from The Wall Street Journal, where he spent the past several years as the lead data reporter on the national politics team, covering presidential campaigns, elections, demographics and money in politics. At the Journal, he specialized in building tools that help reporters tell deeper stories using data, particularly about the American electorate. Most recently, he was part of a Journal team that revealed weaknesses in the federal government's ethics programs including that thousands of federal officials were allowed to own or trade stocks in companies actively lobbying their agencies. Of course, many of us know Chad from his time at AP. He was an election analyst on the Decision Team during the 2016 and 2018 campaign cycles and a reporter on the Washington investigative team, where he covered special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and the 2016 presidential campaign. A proud Mizzou grad, Chad got his start at the Kansas City Star and reported for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette before coming to Washington. Chad’s first day will be Feb. 21. Please join us in welcoming him back to the AP!