In the
1998 election cycle, he served as Women VOTE! coordinator for
Emily's List. He was also the Special Projects Director for the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the
2000 campaign cycle, and as Senior Political Advisor to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) in the
2002 cycle. In these roles, he worked first as an intern at
Stan Greenberg's Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, and later for Diane Feldman's Feldman Group. In this capacity, he conducted polling research on the potential of Democrats to win "red states" that they had previously considered to be out of reach, and helped to organize the "
fifty-state strategy" favored by the committee's then-chairman,
Howard Dean. In fall 2015, Belcher was a visiting fellow at the
Harvard Kennedy School. Belcher has also been a featured speaker at the
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at
New York University. In the
2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Belcher advised
Michael Bloomberg on African American outreach strategy. Belcher is a regular contributor on
NBC News,
MSNBC, and
NPR. He had previously been a political contributor to
CNN.
Brilliant Corners In 2001, Belcher founded Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies (stylized as brilliant corners Research & Strategies), a polling firm that played a major role in electing
Barack Obama as President of the United States in both 2008 and 2012. As of 2020, Belcher remains the firm's president. He helped conduct some of the Obama campaign's earliest research on race leading up to the 2008 election.
Recognition Belcher has been named a pollster of the year by the
American Association of Political Consultants, and has twice been named a member of
The Root 100. ==References==