Doug Schoen

Doug Schoen was raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the son of a corporate lawyer. He attended the Horace Mann School in New York City, where he first met his future business collaborator Mark Penn. While still in high school, Schoen began his political activity by canvassing on the Upper West Side for strategist Dick Morris.

Schoen went on to attend Harvard College, graduating magna cum laude in 1974. He continued his studies at Harvard Law School, earning a Juris Doctor, and subsequently completed a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford. While still an undergraduate at Harvard, he launched his consulting career by working on the successful 1973 New York City Council campaign of Father Louis R. Gigante.

In 1977, Schoen co-founded the polling and political consulting firm Penn & Schoen alongside Mark Penn. After Michael Berland joined the team in 1987, the firm became Penn, Schoen & Berland. The firm built a reputation for survey research and quantitative analysis, leading the American Association of Political Consultants to name Schoen Pollster of the Year in 1996.

Following the 1994 midterm elections, President Bill Clinton hired Dick Morris, who brought Schoen and Penn into the White House political team. Schoen served as a polling analyst and strategist for Clinton through the successful 1996 reelection campaign and remained an advisor through 2000. Over his career, Schoen also consulted on domestic campaigns for prominent politicians such as Evan Bayh, Jay Rockefeller, Richard Shelby, and Florida Senate candidate Jeff Greene, as well as working on Michael Bloomberg's exploratory 2020 presidential campaign.

In addition to electoral campaigns, Schoen expanded his consulting into the corporate sector beginning in the 1980s, working with clients including AT&T, Procter & Gamble, and Time Warner. Penn, Schoen & Berland was acquired by the advertising and communications conglomerate WPP plc in 2001, after which Schoen established Schoen Consulting in New York City.

Beyond American domestic politics, Schoen served as an advisor to heads of state and political leaders in more than fifteen countries. His international political clients have included British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Beginning in 2000, Schoen was retained by Ukrainian steel industrialist Victor Pinchuk. Schoen registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a lobbyist representing Pinchuk in the United States. In this role, Schoen facilitated introductions and meetings with high-level American political figures, including Hillary Clinton and senior State Department officials. He also coordinated with figures such as Michael Cohen and Monica Crowley on foreign policy conferences and outreach initiatives connected to Pinchuk.

Schoen transitioned into national media commentary in 2009, when he was hired as a political analyst by Fox News. He contributed regular analysis to the network for over a decade before departing to join Newsmax TV as an on-air analyst in January 2021. Schoen has also written regular columns for Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

As an author, Schoen has published numerous books examining elections, presidential leadership, and foreign policy. His published works include Enoch Powell and the Powellites (1977), The Power of the Vote (2007), Declaring Independence (2008), The Threat Closer to Home (2009), Mad as Hell (2010, co-authored with Scott Rasmussen), Hopelessly Divided (2012), The Nixon Effect (2016), America in the Age of Trump (2017), and The End of Democracy (2020). In 2019, he served as a Visiting Fellow at the USC Center for the Political Future.