Knee Matt Knee M.A., M.Phil

Chief Data Officer

Matt is a veteran political data scientist with experience providing modeling, analytics, and strategic consulting to clients at all levels of politics, from state and local races to senatorial and presidential campaigns and national committees.

He also is experienced in corporate and public affairs work, especially in the fields of education policy and pro-Israel advocacy. He also specializes in projects for modeling and mobilizing within specific subgroups of the electorate, such as independents, religious groups, parents, and the like.

In addition to working with clients, he oversees our modeling and analytics product lines, and is responsible for the development of our data methodologies and products.

Matt earned his M.A. and M.Phil. (Ph.D. ABD) in Political Science at Yale, and uses that background to focus on leveraging social science, political psychology, and statistics to win elections.

Matt was the primary data scientist behind the creation of the Republican National Committee’s Voter Scoring system, building the target selection system and most of the metrics and prediction systems that became the backbone of the GOP’s 2014 data resurgence. During the 2016 cycle, he redesigned the modeling system from scratch to power the party’s successful presidential year campaign. He massively increased its scale and speed, turning it into the largest microtargeting effort ever attempted and producing 51 billion predictions.

In the 2018 cycle, he joined WPAi, where he began building, rebuilding, and evolving WPAi’s data systems and products to constantly stay ahead of the rest of the industry.

His innovative product and client work has been recognized with 33 Reed and Pollie awards across every major data, analytics, and targeting category, for clients such as the Republican National Committee, McConnell for Senate, the Republican Jewish Coalition, Youngkin for Governor, and Ann Wagner for Congress.

This includes eight of the fourteen Best Use of Analytics Pollies awarded to anyone for work in the past five on-years elections. In 2019, he was named one of the 40 Under 40 by the American Association of Political Consultants.

He previously served as Chief Data Scientist at TargetPoint Consulting and Principal at MRK Strategic. When not working to elect Republicans, Matt is an amateur chef and board game player.