Disney Shutters Polling Unit FiveThirtyEight

Entertainment giant Disney has announced the closure of its political and data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight, as part of 200 job cuts in its news and entertainment division. FiveThirtyEight was acquired from US pollster Nate Silver in 2013 by ESPN, and since 2018 has been part of the ABC News division.

The unit was founded in 2008 as a polling aggregation web site, and uses statistical and opinion poll analysis to tell stories about elections, politics, sports, science, economics and lifestyle. Its name comes from the number of electors in the US electoral college.

The cuts were first reported in the Wall Street Journal, and are part of a continuing focus on streamlining the workforce to match changes in media consumption. More than 8,000 roles have been cut since 2023, according to Yahoo Finance, which says the company's linear network revenue declined 7% in 2024.

A net fifteen jobs will be lost with FiveThirtyEight closure, although ABC News reportedly intends to continue providing polling data and analysis. The unit was most recently headed up by editorial Director of Data Analytics G. Elliott Morris.

Silver, who served as Editor-in-Chief of the unit for a decade until leaving in 2023, tweeted this week, 'I just saw the news about 538. My heart goes out to the people there. They were tremendously hard-working and produced a lot of extremely valuable data and insight for everyone who wants to understand politics better. They deserved much better'.

Web sites: www.disney.com and https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls .