Michael Barone joined FOX News Channel as a political contributor in 1998.

From 1989 to 1996 and again from 1998 to the present, he has also been a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report.

From 1996 to 1998, Barone was a senior staff editor at Readers Digest and a member of the editorial page staff for the Washington Post.

Before joining the Washington Post in 1981, Barone served as vice president of the Peter D. Hart Research Associates. He is the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics and the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan. 

Barone has also written for many major market publications, including The Economist, The New York Times, The Detroit Press, American Enterprise and The Daily Telegraph of London.

He graduated from Harvard University in 1966 and Yale Law School in 1969.