David M. Rothschild

David M. Rothschild

Economist, Senior Principal Researcher
Fields: Political Science (public opinion, predictions), Marketing (paid media), Communications (earned media), Behavioral Economics & Finance (judgement & decision making and market design).
Data: Generative Models, Markets, Surveys, Behavioral, Administrative, Social Media, Online Telemetry.

Popular Writing

Find me on BlueSky · Threads

2026

Interview
Exclusive Interview: The Agentic Economy Is Coming Fast
Superintelligent, 2026
Article
Open Digital Markets in the Agentic Economy
Microsoft Signal, January 2026
Article
AI Is Inevitable, But Its Trajectory Is Not
MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, 2026
Article
Prediction Markets vs. Polling
Undark, May 5, 2026
Article
Microsoft Advocates for Open Agentic Economy
Economic Times Enterprise AI, January 30, 2026
Interview
AI 에이전트 시대, 플랫폼 패권의 이동 (The Agentic Economy)
Dong-A Business Review (Korea), May 2026
Podcast
Why AI Agents Will End the Attention Economy
The AI Frontier Playbook, 2026
Podcast
Guiding the AI Disruption to the Good Place
2026

2025

Article
The Events that Defined Trump's First 100 Days of His Second Term
Media Bias Detector, May 9, 2025
Article
Understanding the Impact of Tariffs on Consumers and Businesses
Media Bias Detector, February 6, 2025
Article
Media Coverage (or lack thereof) of Trump's First Week in Office
Media Bias Detector, January 30, 2025

2024

Article
New York Times: Biden's age is 10.9x more important than Trump's Project 2025
Media Bias Detector, December 19, 2024
Article
2024 Election Recap: What the Media Told Us
Media Bias Detector, December 6, 2024
Interview
Are We Misinformed About Misinformation?
Undark, October 24, 2024
Article
How the Media Bias Detector Shows Differences in Public Discourse Between the Biden vs Trump and Harris vs Trump Debates
Media Bias Detector, September 25, 2024
Article
What the Media Bias Detector is telling us going into the upcoming Trump v. Harris debate
Media Bias Detector, September 10, 2024
Podcast
How choice can skew the public's understanding of what is real and what is fake
It's All Journalism, July 15, 2024
Podcast
Misconceptions on misinformation
Behind the Markets, Wharton Business Radio, July 6, 2024
Article
David's Personal Highlights of the Media Bias Detector!
Media Bias Detector, June 24, 2024
Article
Joe Biden's (but not Donald Trump's) age: A case study in the NYT's inconsistent narrative selection and framing
Media Bias Detector, June 12, 2024

For 2017–2023 writing, most of my output lived on Twitter (@DavMicRot).

📰 Articles About Me (2012–2016)
Article
When you hear the margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent. Think 7 instead.
New York Times, October 5, 2016
Article
We Gave Four Good Pollsters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Different Results.
New York Times, September 20, 2016
Interview
Why the Whole Trump-Clinton Election Could Probably Just Be Held in Pennsylvania
New York Times, September 16, 2016
Article
Ranking the 2016 Presidential Primary Polls and Predictions
Bloomberg, June 29, 2016
Article
Who's Going to Win the Presidential Election?
Columbia Magazine, June 7, 2016
Article
There's A High Chance Of A Contested Republican Convention
Huffington Post, March 30, 2016
Article
You can bet real money on the US Election. It's for research
Wired, March 1, 2016
Article
How Microsoft Helped ESPN With Its Top 100 All-Time NBA Rankings
Tech Times, February 22, 2016
Interview
5 Q's for David Rothschild, Economist at Microsoft Research
Center for Data Innovation, July 20, 2015
Video
From data collection to data analytics to data consumption
Microsoft Research, August 24, 2015
Article
Microsoft came remarkably close to predicting all 24 Oscar winners
Engadget, February 23, 2015
Article
Voters Expect Republican Wins, in Kansas and Elsewhere
New York Times, October 27, 2014
Article
Microsoft Begins a Push Into the Polling World
New York Times, September 29, 2014
Article
How Microsoft Perfectly Predicted the World Cup's Final Stage
Foreign Policy, July 14, 2014
Article
Microsoft's version of 'Nate Silver' dishes out data-backed predictions for 2014
Geek Wire, December 26, 2013
Article
Microsoft Research Grabs More Room for Data Science in Silicon Alley
Xconomy, August 28, 2013
Article
Microsoft Predicts Eurovision. The Winner Will Be Denmark
Bloomberg, May 15, 2013
Article
The Magic Prophet: Let's Meet the Prophetic Microsoft Researcher!
Global Entrepreneur, April 5, 2013
Podcast
Predicting Oscar Winners
NPR's On the Media, February 22, 2013
Video
The science of predicting Oscar winners
Reuters TV, February 21, 2013
Podcast
Big Data Versus Little Data: Predicting the Academy Awards
IEEE Spectrum, February 21, 2013
Article
And the Oscar Goes to …
MSR, February 13, 2013
Article
Obama Expected to Win Ohio, Say YouGov/Xbox Poll Respondents
Time, November 2, 2012
Article
A Better Poll Question: Who Do You Think Will Win?
New York Times, November 1, 2012
Video
Forget the polls, Obama is still winning: PredictWise
Reuters TV, October 19, 2012
Article
Why the President Is Still a Heavy Favorite on the Prediction Markets
PBS NewsHour, October 12, 2012
Video
Political Polls, Professors and Election Markets Predict the Presidential Race
PBS NewsHour, October 12, 2012
Podcast
Microsoft Researcher Predicts Obama to Win
IEEE Spectrum, October 3, 2012
Article
'12 Campaign: Predicting the U.S. Election
MSR, September 26, 2012
✍️ Articles By Me (2016–2017)
Article
What Americans Mean When They Talk About "Populism"
Buzzfeed, February 17, 2017
Article
This Poll Shows A Lot Of Republicans Like Ivanka — And So Do 22% Of Democrats
Buzzfeed, February 16, 2017
Article
Trump and the GOP Have Massively Unpopular Tax Policies
Slate, November 30, 2016
Article
New poll: 30% of Trump supporters say they'll protest the election if he loses
Washington Post, November 8, 2016
Article
Chasing Electoral Ghosts: We looked at 130 million ballots and found practically zero evidence of fraud
Slate, November 7, 2016
Article
Hillary Clinton would win in Australia, New Zealand, England, Canada, France, Mexico and Germany. But not Russia.
Washington Post, November 7, 2016
Article
Preparing for Future: Smartphone Only Polling
Huffington Post, October 30, 2016
Article
Poll: 60% of Republicans believe illegal immigrants vote
Washington Post, October 24, 2016
Article
Will Republican voters flee Trump, post-video? Here's what we found.
Washington Post, October 14, 2016
Article
When you hear the margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent. Think 7 instead.
New York Times, October 5, 2016
Article
All polls are non-probability to varying degrees
Huffington Post, September 7, 2016
Article
Why you shouldn't be fooled by polling bounces
Slate, August 5, 2016
Article
Who cares about free trade? Not many Americans, it turns out.
Washington Post, July 29, 2016
Article
Something's Odd About the Political Betting Markets
Slate, July 11, 2016
Article
Brexit: leave voters relatively unfazed by currency collapse
Huffington Post, July 1, 2016
Article
Before you get surgery, check this evidence: Less-invasive treatments work better
Washington Post, June 30, 2016
Article
Four keys for predicting whether Britain will leave the European Union
Washington Post, June 22, 2016
Article
There is no "Trump Bump" in the polls — just a growing lead for the Democrats
Washington Post, June 7, 2016
Article
New polls show that more Americans prefer Democrats' policies
Washington Post, May 27, 2016
Article
Will it be Clinton or Trump in November? Here's what's wrong with most predictions
Washington Post, May 3, 2016
Article
We did the math. Cruz was smart to campaign in a Bronx district with almost no Republican voters
Washington Post, April 19, 2016
Article
The prediction markets were right about Tuesday's primaries. So what do they say about November?
Washington Post, March 17, 2016
Article
Trump is closer to what most Republicans believe than the 'establishment' candidates are
Washington Post, March 6, 2016