G. Elliott Morris couldn’t have predicted the arc of his career back when he was a first-year student at The University of Texas at Austin. The Texas native came to the university partially to stay close to family, and partially because he had been in policy debate in high school and liked UT’s program. “That’s not necessarily what I pursued when I was at school, but that’s why I decided to go,” he says with a laugh.
Instead, a pivotal class and research experiences supported by the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), including an Undergraduate Research Fellowship, jumpstarted a fascination with polling. Since graduating in 2018 with degrees in government and history, he has joined the staff of The Economist as a data journalist and U.S. correspondent and, in July 2022, published his first book, Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them. He has returned to the Forty Acres several times over the past few years as a guest lecturer and now sits down with OUR to discuss how he got to where he is—and how current Longhorns can follow in his footsteps.