Get the latest tech news

A few words about FiveThirtyEight

Silver Bulletin will begin publishing some new features soon — including Trump approval ratings. But the media just lost an extremely valuable resource.

Last night, as President Trump delivered his State of the Union address, the Wall Street Journal reported that ABC News would lay off the remaining staff at 538 as part of broader cuts within corporate parent Disney. I don’t know all of the staffers from the most recent iteration of the site, but the ones I have met or who I overlapped with are all extremely conscientious and hard-working people and were often forced to work double-duty as jobs were cut but frequently not replaced. Collecting and maintaining a database of public polls is a lot of work, requiring diligence, meticulousness, and dealing with constant complaints about edge cases from readers and pollsters.

Get the Android app