Is 538 over?

Not sure what to make of this, but...

FiveThirtyEight’s editorial director of data analytics, G. Elliott Morris, confirmed the layoffs on Bluesky on Wednesday, writing, “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.” . . .

So the site itself is still up and apparently they are going to be keeping the guts of the polling in place. Nate Silver was pushed out of the site he created back in 2023. Now it appears that Disney (which owns the site) is pushing everyone else out as well over some disputes regarding editorial direction and resource allocation. Not sure what this means exactly, but either Disney believed 538 was too liberal, not liberal enough, or was focused on the wrong thing.

Now they claim that the polling and such isn't going away, just all of the people who were keeping track of everything. I had my own issues with 538 over the years and felt their manner of correcting the polling with their own biases was always wrong-headed. They have never been all that accurate, but it was a great place to gather raw data if you wanted to. That being said, Silver now has his own Substack area, the Hill has gotten involved with tracking polling, RCP is still out there aggregating, perhaps 538 was nothing much special anymore. Time will tell where this all goes. Either way, the beat goes on.