Politics have been core to FiveThirtyEight since its inception, and on Nov. 4 the site will debut its most comprehensive election coverage to date, including the unveiling of a new, dedicated FiveThirtyEight studio. The studio will serve as home base for Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver and his staff, who will be live blogging throughout the night at FiveThirtyEight.com and appearing across ABC News Election Day coverage on air and online.
The studio, built in FiveThirtyEight’s newsroom in New York, will bring Silver and his team, including senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten, together to analyze and discuss the election results. Live hits from the FiveThirtyEight studio will be featured as part of ABC News election night coverage hosted by George Stephanopolous and will be available online at ABCNews.com. Moving forward, the studio will be used to host FiveThirtyEight’s upcoming multimedia content, such as podcasts and editorial segments for both the website, ESPN and ABC News.
Leading up to the elections, FiveThirtyEight’s coverage has explored the hotly contested races and issues facing voters on Nov. 4. The Senate forecast section of FiveThirtyEight, launched on Sept. 2, has been the most consumed content page in October.
FiveThirtyEight will publish its final Senate forecast on Nov. 3, which will be incorporated into the website’s interactive election forecasting model. The series of interactive maps, charts and graphs has been calculating the odds for each Senate race since the beginning of the campaign season, by combining hundreds of opinion polls with historical and demographic information.
The FiveThirtyEight staff will be live blogging throughout Election Day. Additionally, editorial coverage will include several in-depth pieces that visually explore remarkable trends, legislations and economic factors surrounding the election. One of data visualization tools, developed by Enten and visual journalist Reuben Fischer-Baum, will highlight a county-by-county benchmark for the most competitive races.
FiveThirtyEight, which launched as an ESPN entity in 2014, is a data journalism organization delivering compelling stories across the verticals of politics, economy, science, life and sports. The site, founded by award-winning author and statistician Nate Silver, first gained national attention during the 2008 presidential election, when it correctly predicted the results of the presidential election in 49 of 50 states, along with all 35 U.S. Senate races. Since its debut at ESPN, FiveThirtyEight has built a team with a broad set of skills and experiences in order to apply statistical analysis, data visualization, and data-literate reporting to topics in the news and in everyday life.