Sean McElwee

Sean McElwee (born 1992 or 1993) is an American policy advisor, data scientist, and activist. McElwee was the founding executive director of Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and polling firm he co-founded in 2018. He was also the Founder and Chairman of the Cheeky Lads Banter Club, a Massachusetts-based think tank before its dissolution in 2021. In December 2022, McElwee announced he would resign from the firm amidst allegations of artificially manipulating the results of polls and his close ties to fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. He attended The King's College, a Christian college in New York City, and holds a master's degree in quantitative Methods for social science from Columbia University.

Career After graduating from college, he briefly worked for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank. McElwee later became a researcher for the progressive think tank Demos. and wrote a New York Times article on the topic. McElwee is an advocate of left-wing primary challenges to moderate Democrats. In 2020, McElwee reportedly pushed the Justice Democrats to spend money on Cori Bush's campaign against Lacy Clay.

McElwee had close ties to Sam Bankman-Fried, a former cryptocurrency billionaire, who has since been convicted of fraud. McElwee conducted polling for a Super PAC controlled by Bankman-Fried that was described as a "political strategy designed to shield crypto from government oversight". The firm was credited by The Atlantic for releasing one of the first reports on the Green New Deal, and one independent analysis found that Data for Progress was the most accurate pollster in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Polling and analysis from Data for Progress has been regularly cited by the Biden administration, and McElwee's tweets were noted for being frequently retweeted by White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Following the 2022 midterms, it was reported that McElwee was gambling on election results on the site PredictIt, which raised ethical concerns. Additionally, it has been reported McElwee had inquired among his employees about having them participate in an illegal straw donor scheme.