• by Joe Mandese , March 5, 2025

As part of a round of layoffs in its ABC News unit, Disney is shuttering FiveThirtyEight, the polling aggregator founded in 2008 by Nate Silver.

The move comes 12 years after Disney's ESPN unit acquired the independent polling data publisher, and more than a year after fivethirtyeight.com already was redirected to ABC News' https://abcnews.go.com/538.

It also follows a series of high-profile elections in which polling in general, and polling data aggregation in particular, has been proven to be an unreliable indicator of election outcomes.

At presstime, ABC News' 538 hub showed several polls updated within the past 24 hours, including aggregate polling showing both President Trump and Vice President Vance under water in terms of their favorability ratings, just as Trump was poised to deliver a highly partisan address to both houses of Congress that was the longest-running of any president to date, and unrelenting in terms of political attacks.

News of 538's demise was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.