<p>Disney axed Nate Silver&#8217;s once-influential FiveThirtyEight on Wednesday as part of sweeping job cuts at ABC News, ending the data-driven political site&#8217;s seven-year run at the network.</p>
<p>FiveThirtyEight gained national prominence for its statistical approach to political forecasting but drew criticism for misses in key elections, most notably giving Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of winning the 2016 presidential election.</p>
<p>FiveThirtyEight&#8217;s editorial director of data analytics, G. Elliott Morris, confirmed the layoffs on Bluesky on Wednesday, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/gelliottmorris.com/post/3ljnfl3pvuc2v">writing</a>, “As reported, the entire staff of 538 was laid off this morning. This is a severe blow to political data journalism, and I feel for my colleagues.”</p>
<p>The cuts are part of a broader restructuring at Disney, the parent company of ABC, which is slashing approximately 200 positions (about 6% of its workforce) across ABC News and Disney Entertainment Networks, continuing the trend of media company layoffs and restructuring across the industry, Mediaite <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/media/fivethirtyeight-gets-the-ax-as-abc-news-slashes-jobs-in-major-shakeup/">reported</a>. Many journalists lamented FiveThirtyEight’s demise on social media.</p>
<p>Silver, who founded the site in 2008 and left ABC in May 2023, wrote on X, &#8220;Oh geez, I just saw the news about 538. My heart goes out to the people there. They were tremendously hard-working and produced a lot of extremely valuable data and insight for everyone who wants to understand politics better. They deserved much better.&#8221;</p>
<p>Silver left ABC amid reports of tension with network executives over resource allocation and editorial direction.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Oh geez, I just saw the news about 538. My heart goes out to the people there. They were tremendously hard-working and produced a lot of extremely valuable data and insight for everyone who wants to understand politics better. They deserved much better.</p>
<p>&mdash; Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) <a href="https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1897141188664418476?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
<p>FiveThirtyEight began as an independent polling aggregation platform before being licensed to The New York Times, then acquired by ESPN in 2013, and later transferred to ABC News.</p>
<p>Despite shuttering the project, ABC News said it would &#8220;continue to provide the best-in-class polling and political data analysis that it has offered for decades.&#8221;</p>
<p>The decision to close FiveThirtyEight comes as legacy media organizations face declining audiences and increasing competition from independent content creators and alternative news sources.</p>
<p>The shutdown also impacts several ABC News programs, with investigative shows “20/20” and “Nightline” merging into a single unit, while all three hours of &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; will now fall under one production team instead of separate management, Variety <a href="https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/disney-200-layoffs-tv-abc-news-1236328122/">reported</a>.</p>
<p>The move reflects Disney&#8217;s ongoing financial challenges under CEO Bob Iger, who returned to the company in 2022 and has implemented multiple cost-cutting measures. Disney shares have fallen more than 3% over the past year as the entertainment giant navigates streaming losses and declining cable television viewership, according to financial <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DIS/">data</a> from Yahoo Finance.</p>

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Disney Pulls Plug On FiveThirtyEight Amid Broader ABC News Cuts