Nate Silver’s farewell. History of a way of narrating politics

Readers at first knew him only as “poblano.” A daytime baseball data analyst, the mystery writer began diving into politics in a data-packed Daily Kos blog post published at 2:10 a.m. on Nov. 1, 2007, titled “HRC Electability in Purple States.” “Clinton is very polarizing. In fact, she is as polarizing as George W. Bush,” she wrote “poblano.” “Think of the degree of hatred you feel for Shrub. This is how many voters of every shade of purple and red feel about Hillary Clinton.” He soon had a loyal audience and founded FiveThirtyEight – named after the number of votes in the electoral college – in March of 2008. In May, he revealed his identity. “It’s not very professional to keep referring to yourself as a chili pepper,” Nate Silver wrote in an article titled, “No, I’m Not Chuck Todd,” referring to the NBC host and political editor. Now, 15 years and many iterations later, Silver appears to be leaving ABC News and FiveThirtyEight, which he has led since its inception. “My contract is due to end soon and I expect to be gone,” she tweeted on Tuesday. The news that Silver is considering leaving FiveThirtyEight was first broken by The Hollywood Reporter. The move comes as news outlets have faced layoffs amid economic uncertainty, with the recent closure of BuzzFeed News and dozens of job cuts by other outlets. In the tweet, Silver described himself as “sad and disappointed” over the layoffs at ABC’s parent company, Disney. Silver did not respond to a Washington Post request for comment. Over the past 15 years, Silver has built an increasingly public profile for himself through blogs, model screenings, and frequent social media postsfirst as a baseball analyst, then as an election forecaster – he correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election – and finally as a frequent commentator on Covid-19. His first notable work with statistics began in the early 2000s, when he developed the Player Empirical Comparison and Organization Test Algorithm (Pecota). He sold it to Baseball Prospectus, a statistical organization, and ultimately predicted the Chicago White Sox would lose 90 games in the season he worked for the group, according to The New York Times.