Thousands of US polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight Articles seemingly vanish from the internet

An archived website of FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism publication known for its polling analysis and election models, is now redirecting readers to ABC News, its owner and former host.

As a result, many thousands of articles stretching back to FiveThirtyEight’s founding in 2008 are no longer accessible online, according to Mr Nathaniel Rakich, a former senior staff editor at the publication.

ABC shut down FiveThirtyEight, which was founded by Mr Nate Silver and specialised in data-driven analyses of elections, sports and other subjects, in March 2025.

But an earlier stand-alone version of the publication, fivethirtyeight.com – discontinued in 2023, when FiveThirtyEight merged with ABCNews.com – had been archived and remained accessible online.

It is not clear why or precisely when the content was removed, though comments about a lack of access began appearing online on May 15. ABC News declined multiple requests for comment.

A vast majority of fivethirtyeight.com is no longer available; users who attempt to navigate to the site are now redirected to the political news page of ABC News. The only portion of the old site that still appeared to be accessible on May 16 was data.fivethirtyeight.com, which is meant to offer access to the data and code underlying the publication’s work. Many of the relevant links, however, were redirecting users to ABC News.

Mr Rakich, who oversaw editorial operations at FiveThirtyEight, is now the managing editor at Votebeat, a nonprofit that covers voting access and election integrity. He was one of the first people to flag the issue on social media. Around 700 of his own articles were among the lost work, he said May 15.

Mr Silver, who left FiveThirtyEight in 2023, said that he had recently tried to purchase the intellectual property rights for FiveThirtyEight but that ABC had rebuffed him.

Like Mr Rakich and other former FiveThirtyEight employees, Mr Silver was not entirely surprised that fivethirtyeight.com had seemingly been taken offline, given that the publication had shut down in 2025 But he was very sorry, he said, to see it go.

“All the work that’s been done, you know, groundbreaking work covering this remarkable period in American politics, is lost,” he said, adding, “It’s really depressing.” NYTIMES