Writing
I write about public opinion, narrative intelligence, campaigns, data, AI and the lessons that come from putting those disciplines into practice.
My primary long-form publication is Data, Politics, and the Future on Substack. ChristopherSWilson.com is the curated home for my ideas, biography and selected work—not a duplicate publishing platform.
Selected Writing
If you’re new to my work, these essays are the best place to start. Together they trace the questions I return to most often: how opinion moves, how narratives take hold, what different research methods can and cannot tell us, and how information becomes strategy.
Public Opinion & Movement
The Hidden Metrics Deciding Elections (That Polling Can’t See)
An examination of persuadability, issue salience, message resonance and volatility as dimensions that topline support alone may miss.
What Moves Voters
An exploration of why exposure to a message and a change in opinion are different questions.
The Volatility Problem
A distinction between the amount of expressed support and the durability or fragility beneath it.
Voters Decide Earlier Than Polls Can Measure
An examination of the possible gap between an internal preference, confidence in that preference and its public declaration.
The New Gold Standard: How Real-Time Sentiment, Legacy Polling, and Analytics Will Decide 2026
A case for examining survey research, real-time sentiment and analytics together while recognizing their different blind spots.
Narrative Intelligence
The Slopaganda Election
An exploration of how abundant synthetic content complicates the distinction between observable activity and meaningful signal.
America Is Atomizing. Campaigns Haven’t Caught Up.
An examination of how fragmented information communities challenge familiar demographic categories and assumptions about shared identity.
How Races Collapse Before Votes Move
An account of narrative compression, in which perceived inevitability may precede reported preference changes but can also prove temporary.
Campaigns, Data & AI
Most Media Plans Are Structurally Wrong
A critique of media planning that treats delivery and reach as sufficient evidence of persuasion.
After the AI Persuasion Boom: Why Measurement Is Becoming the Real Battleground
An examination of why easier AI-assisted content production raises harder questions about measuring change.
The Next Great Campaign Advantage Won’t Be Television. It Will Be Conversation.
Guest essay for The Friday Brief, Advanced School of Politics · July 17, 2026
Christopher S. Wilson examines conversational AI, strategic judgment and the safeguards needed to use emerging technology responsibly.
Lessons From the Arena
The Most Dangerous Person in Politics
A reflection on how experience, certainty and organizational incentives can obstruct learning from evidence.
Lessons From Wins, Losses and a 2,045-Vote Oklahoma Runoff
A reflection on the gap between possessing useful research and allowing it to shape decisions, drawing on campaign experience.
Selected Published Commentary
How Glenn Youngkin won
The Washington Post · November 8, 2021
By Jeff Roe, Kristin Davison, Chris Wilson and Amanda Iovino
A coauthored account of Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 Virginia campaign.
Getting rid of microtargeting in political advertising is a terrible idea
The Washington Post · November 17, 2019
By Chris Wilson
Commentary on political advertising, targeting and access to digital platforms.
The GOP Needs a Free Facebook
The Wall Street Journal · April 2018
By Chris Wilson
Commentary on social-media advertising and political communication.
A Real-Time Case Study
One way I try to discipline this work is to state what I’m looking for before an event and then examine what actually happened afterward.
Can a Convention Still Create Momentum?
The first essay sets out the measurement questions in advance: where attention travels, which arguments emerge, who receives attention and what persists.
The Balloons Fell. Here’s What Moved.
The follow-up reports the conversation and narrative changes observed afterward, while explicitly distinguishing those indicators from demonstrated changes in vote preference.
