Donald Trump’s campaign manager used a Semafor report on issues with ABC News’ 538 election model to take a shot at the entire prediction effort, labeling it “a suppression tool” and calling for ABC to disown the 538 model. His criticism comes as the 538 model, which favored Biden even at his lowest point before dropping out of the race, is back and now favors Kamala Harris to defeat Trump with a 59% chance of Harris victory.
The report LaCivita linked to notes that the 538 model was taken offline when Biden dropped out and appears to have been reworked since then, now appearing to more closely match other popular and respected election models. But ABC has not provided transparency into those changes and the reasons they were made. Semafor cites ABC sources who say that the 538 staff were prevented by ABC News and the network’s communications team “from discussing or disclosing many details about the changes publicly.” It also notes that there were internal disagreements at the network about how much to explain the changes, if at all.
The famed 538 election prediction model, based largely on aggregating numerous polls, has long been under fire despite its above-average accuracy ever since it favored Hillary Clinton to beat Donald Trump in 2016. But since ABC News acquired the site and parted ways with founder Nate Silver, they’ve been running a new prediction model — which has caused headaches of its own, both inside and outside of ABC.
“This is a suppression tool used by the media to drive a narrative they concoct ..then they ‘report’ on,” LaCivita asserted on X. “@ABC should disown it if they want to maintain any credibility.”
The site’s founder himself, Silver, had criticized the 538 model before it was reworked, pointing to the fact that it seemed to overemphasize items seen as election fundamentals — such as the power of being an incumbent candidate — rather than the actual polls. It’s also been critcized by one of the other most prominent voices in polling, the New York Times’ chief political analyst Nate Cohn.
A number of people have also noted that ABC has downplayed the once-central election prediction model, making it difficult to find on the ABC News website. The model itself isn’t currently linked to from the 538 homepage, beyond a link to an article about its methodology, while other charts showing information including an average of the polls and whether Democrats or Republicans are favored remain featured.
The model was taken offline when Biden dropped out, but 538 public announced that they didn’t plan to put it back up online until the Democrats officially nominated a new candidate. Even when that quietly happened behind the scenes ahead of the Democratic National Convention, they still didn’t put the model back up online until the convention was over.
Founder Silver has continued to criticize the site he founded, noting that he retained the rights to his election model, which he has made available on a subscription basis through his own site. While praising the 538 staff, he doesn’t think the site is being well served by its owners.
“I imagine the folks still working for 538 would prefer more transparency too,” Silver wrote on X. “It’s an incredibly bad decision by Disney/ABC News and they deserve 100% of the criticism coming their way.”
The Times’ Cohn explained some of the differences in the new model, while also calling for greater transparency from ABC.
“If the model did change, it’s not obvious in the methodology article,” Cohn wrote Friday. “I think this model makes more sense, but the need for explanation and transparency is even greater after such a huge shift.”
Cohn went on to note, “Nate Silver became famous bc his models were accurate, but his models were credible long before the election result because he explained the evidence and assumptions behind every step of his model. You can make a model that says just about anything. So the credibility of these models hinges entirely on whether the modeler provides a transparent, thorough and evidence-based description of the methods and findings. Without that, there’s nothing.”
What exactly underlies the revised 538 remains to be revealed by ABC News.
“The ABC folks are great, but I’m not sure whom this is helping,” Lakshya Jain of modeling tool Split Ticket wrote on X. “If they don’t believe in the model, then why publish it? Hiding the model hurts their revenue, does nothing to help repair the press damage, and simply kneecaps the 538 team.”
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