FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver Goes After RealClearPolitics: I’m ‘Pretty Annoyed’ With People ‘Lumping’ Us Together

Slaven Vlasic/AWXII/Getty Images

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver trashed RealClearPolitics in light of what he argued was a pretty big forecasting miss by the latter.

“I don’t feel like getting into a big argument this morning re: RCP, but I’m also pretty annoyed with people lumping 538 together with RCP. Polling websites and forecasts that followed a rigorous, non-arbitrary process (i.e. not RCP) did pretty darn well last night,” he tweeted on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, FiveThirtyEight gave the GOP a 51 percent chance of flipping the Senate. In the wee hours of Tuesday, FiveThirtyEight gave the GOP a 59 percent chance of winning control of the upper congressional chamber. As of press time, control of the Senate is a toss-up as Adam Laxalt, a Republican, has been leading incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV). In Arizona, Republican Blake Masters has been trailing incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). In Georgia, the race between Republican Herschel Walker and incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) appears headed for a Dec. 6 runoff.

RCP predicted the GOP would take the Senate with 53 seats by winning Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and Ohio. In Ohio, Republican J.D. Vance won over Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH). But the Democrats have already won 48 seats, with five still up for grabs. So it’s clear the 53 seat prediction was far too optimistic for Republicans.

As results came in on Tuesday night, Silver gave the Democrats a 68 percent chance of keeping the Senate. This came as incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan defeated Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman beat Republican Mehmet Oz.