ClaimsPeople

Nate Silver

Nate Silver is an election forecaster and writer who founded FiveThirtyEight and now publishes the Silver Bulletin newsletter.

617 claims collected, 163 researched, 84 resolved. Report of 10 November 2026, method 0.1.0+28da144b.

Scores by kind of claim

Each kind of claim is scored on its own, out of 100: the share that held up, with the range it likely falls in. Fewer resolved claims give a wider range.

  • Factual claims

    Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

    82 76 88

    High confidence, 63 factual claims resolved. From 19 documents, 2012 to 2026; 19 documents sampled from 35 candidates found.

    Not scored: 42 unresolvable, 7 checkable only against their own records.

    See the factual claims

  • Predictions

    Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

    61 47 75

    Medium confidence, 16 predictions resolved. From 8 documents, 2015 to 2025; 19 documents sampled from 35 candidates found.

    Not scored: 12 unresolvable. 10 more fall due later.

    Does not yet allow for how likely each prediction was when made.

    See the predictions

  • Promises

    Commitments to the person's or organisation's own future action, with something to deliver: was it delivered?

    67 46 85

    Low confidence, 5 promises resolved. From 4 documents, 2022 to 2025; 19 documents sampled from 35 candidates found.

    Not scored: 7 unresolvable.

    See the promises

All types combined: 77 (likely 72 to 82, high confidence), from 84 claims: 63 factual claims, 16 predictions, 5 promises. It mixes kinds of claim in different proportions for different people, so compare people kind by kind.

Nate Silver's claims

163 claims · page 2 of 2

163 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
VerdictKindSaidClaimTopic
Mixed Factual 6 Jun 2022 Senator Susan Collins voted against Trump's position about one-third of the time, including voting to impeach him, and has voted with Biden about one-third of the time. Factual · 6 Jun 2022 AI policy and governance
Mixed Factual 27 May 2022 Forgiving all student loan debt is quite unpopular with the public in polls. Factual · 27 May 2022 Economics and markets
Research failed Factual 27 May 2022 Forgiving some student loan debt is reasonably popular. Factual · 27 May 2022 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Factual 24 May 2022 In May 2022, Silver said Trump was not *that* far ahead of DeSantis in polls, and that it was pretty even once name recognition was accounted for. Factual · 24 May 2022 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual 21 May 2022 Joe Biden's approval rating never had a spike. Factual · 21 May 2022 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Prediction 29 Jun 2021 It seems very likely that people who received one dose of the J&J COVID vaccine would benefit from a Pfizer or Moderna booster. Prediction · 29 Jun 2021 Biosecurity
Resolved true Factual 26 Jun 2021 If a very high percentage of a group is vaccinated, a fairly high percentage of infections may be among vaccinated people even if the vaccines are highly effective. Factual · 26 Jun 2021 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Factual 22 Jun 2021 A group of scholars convened by Democracy to rewrite the constitution added a wealth tax but did not clarify the presidential line of succession beyond the VP. Factual · 22 Jun 2021 AI policy and governance
Unresolvable Factual 21 Jun 2021 Eric Adams has led on initial preference in 13 consecutive polls of the NYC mayoral primary. Factual · 21 Jun 2021 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual 16 Jun 2021 The risk of a vaccinated young person getting severely ill from COVID is incredibly low, though not zero. Factual · 16 Jun 2021 Biosecurity
Resolved true Prediction 11 Jun 2021 The US could see a rise in COVID cases because of the Delta variant, as in the UK. Prediction · 11 Jun 2021 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Factual 10 Jun 2021 The New York Times has a pretty striking negativity bias in its COVID coverage, even relative to other outlets. Factual · 10 Jun 2021 Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true Factual 9 Jun 2021 A pollster that earlier showed a big bounce for Garcia has now shown a result implying either that the earlier poll was an outlier or that Wiley has taken over her momentum. Factual · 9 Jun 2021 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual 8 Jun 2021 The 2020 election forecasts by Nate Silver's team were largely accurate and well-calibrated despite a bad year for the polls. Factual · 8 Jun 2021 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Factual 30 Mar 2020 Biden leads Sanders by 19 points in FiveThirtyEight's national Democratic primary poll average as of 2020-03-30, basically unchanged over several weeks. Factual · 30 Mar 2020 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual 29 Mar 2020 As of 2020-03-29, the UK has tested about one-sixth as many people as the US and its detected case count is about one-sixth as high. Factual · 29 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Resolved true Factual 29 Mar 2020 The Netherlands considered a herd immunity strategy and its case fatality rate is now 7% as of 2020-03-29. Factual · 29 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Mostly true Prediction 28 Mar 2020 The coronavirus peak in the NYC metro area will probably come sooner than elsewhere in the US. Prediction · 28 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Factual 28 Mar 2020 Italy has increased coronavirus testing considerably over the past several days as of 2020-03-28. Factual · 28 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Factual 27 Mar 2020 As of 2020-03-27, detected coronavirus cases are increasing faster in red states than in blue states. Factual · 27 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Prediction 27 Mar 2020 Almost nothing Joe Biden does in the next few weeks will matter much for the November 2020 election. Prediction · 27 Mar 2020 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual 27 Mar 2020 As of late March 2020, the UK has a considerably higher coronavirus death rate than the US, with similar positives per capita. Factual · 27 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Factual 27 Mar 2020 As of 2020-03-27, blue states have more detected coronavirus cases than red states. Factual · 27 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Prediction 26 Mar 2020 Experts expect about 117,000 reported coronavirus cases in the US by Sunday 2020-03-29. Prediction · 26 Mar 2020 Biosecurity
Unresolvable Factual 30 Sep 2019 A new poll shows support for impeachment way up and the share who strongly approve of Trump also up, with overall approval roughly unchanged. Factual · 30 Sep 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual 30 Sep 2019 Two new Democratic primary polls released on 2019-09-30 show no negative fallout for Biden from the Ukraine story, and the HarrisX poll has him gaining a couple of points. Factual · 30 Sep 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual 29 Sep 2019 Margins of error in individual state and national primary polls on support among black or Hispanic voters are often very high, for example around +/- 10%. Factual · 29 Sep 2019 Science and research methods
Resolved true Factual 27 Sep 2019 Democratic primary delegate allocation is highly proportional, and a candidate eventually needs a majority of delegates to win. Factual · 27 Sep 2019 AI policy and governance
Mostly true Factual 26 Sep 2019 In the Democratic primary, a candidate who gets under 15% in a given state or district receives no delegates. Factual · 26 Sep 2019 AI policy and governance
Unresolvable Factual 26 Sep 2019 Pete Alonso's 2019 season is basically the closest season ever to Cecil Fielder's 1990 season. Factual · 26 Sep 2019 Other
Mostly true Prediction 25 Sep 2019 Nate Silver guessed that the public would see the contents of the Ukraine call transcript as very inappropriate conduct and would find the White House's quid pro quo spin unresponsive to their concerns. Prediction · 25 Sep 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Prediction 25 Sep 2019 In what he called a first, possibly imprudent reaction, Nate Silver said it was hard to see how President Trump would not be impeached, given that the call transcript showed him pressuring Ukraine on Biden. Prediction · 25 Sep 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true Factual 23 Sep 2019 Bernie Sanders polled at 11% in the highest-quality poll of Iowa released the weekend of 2019-09-21/22. Factual · 23 Sep 2019 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Prediction 23 Sep 2019 Nate Silver said he still tended not to think public opinion on impeaching Trump would move much, but that it was hard to know. Prediction · 23 Sep 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual 9 Nov 2016 Had Clinton done 2 percentage points better across the board in 2016, she would have received 307 electoral votes and the polls would have called 49 of 50 states correctly. Factual · 9 Nov 2016 AI timelines and forecasting
Mixed Factual Nov 2016 The 2016 polling error was modest and in line with historical polling errors, yet large enough to give Trump many paths to victory. Factual · Nov 2016 AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true Factual Nov 2016 FiveThirtyEight's final 2016 forecast, issued early on election Tuesday evening, gave Trump a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College. Factual · Nov 2016 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual Nov 2016 The main reason FiveThirtyEight's 2016 model gave Trump a better chance than other models was its assumption that polling errors are correlated. Factual · Nov 2016 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual Nov 2016 Inferences from early voting data have a fairly bad track record in predicting election outcomes, including in 2016. Factual · Nov 2016 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual Nov 2016 Most mainstream journalists would have given Trump much lower odds than the 30 percent chance FiveThirtyEight gave him. Factual · Nov 2016 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual Nov 2016 Clinton significantly underperformed her polls across the Midwest and Rust Belt in the 2016 election, costing her the Electoral College. Factual · Nov 2016 AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true Factual 11 Oct 2016 FiveThirtyEight's forecast of Clinton's chances is based on objective analysis of polling in presidential elections dating back to 1972. Factual · 11 Oct 2016 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Factual 11 Oct 2016 FiveThirtyEight's forecast gave Trump only a 20 percent chance of winning given his polling numbers at the time of the second debate. Factual · 11 Oct 2016 Other
Mostly true Factual 11 Oct 2016 The two scientific polls after the second 2016 presidential debate showed a Clinton win, but a more marginal one than after the first debate. Factual · 11 Oct 2016 Science and research methods
Mostly true Factual 11 Oct 2016 Silver said that all the scientific polls after the first 2016 presidential debate showed Clinton had won by a pretty emphatic margin. Factual · 11 Oct 2016 Science and research methods
Resolved true Factual 11 Oct 2016 Scientific post-debate polls showed voters thought Clinton did better in the second 2016 presidential debate. Factual · 11 Oct 2016 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Factual 11 Oct 2016 Silver said he thought "we" had the team, then playing in the NLDS, at "a 35 percent chance or something" of winning the three series in a row it still needed, and that the figure was rising. Factual · 11 Oct 2016 Other
Mixed Factual 11 Oct 2016 Other forecasts gave Trump even lower chances than the 20 percent in Silver's forecast with numbers like those: five or ten percent. Factual · 11 Oct 2016 Other
Unresolvable Factual 2016 If the model were calibrated only on presidential elections since 2000, Clinton's chances would rise to 95 percent and Trump's fall to 5 percent. Factual · 2016 Science and research methods
Mostly true Factual 2016 The t-distribution in FiveThirtyEight's model mostly makes a difference for very low-probability events. Factual · 2016 Science and research methods
Mostly true Factual 2016 In 2012, Obama beat his polling by 2 or 3 percentage points in almost every swing state. Factual · 2016 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Factual 2016 FiveThirtyEight's models give Trump a 15 percent (polls-only) and 17 percent (polls-plus) chance, about twice the NYT Upshot's 8 percent. Factual · 2016 Science and research methods
Mostly true Factual 2016 FiveThirtyEight's model is based on a combination of state and national polls. Factual · 2016 Science and research methods
Mostly true Factual 2016 FiveThirtyEight's polls-only model gives Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning and its polls-plus model gives her 83 percent. Factual · 2016 Science and research methods
Mostly true Factual 2015 Donald Trump's overall favorability ratings in 2015 are about 30 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable, and have not improved. Factual · 2015 Other
Resolved true Factual 2015 With 75 percent of Republicans not voting for Trump, a candidate can still hold the plurality so long as the "no" vote is divided among a sufficient number of alternatives. Factual · 2015 Other
Resolved false Prediction 2015 Donald Trump will not win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Prediction · 2015 Other
Mostly true Factual 2015 In presidential primaries, endorsements and party elite support tend to be more reliable indicators of eventual success than early polls. Factual · 2015 Other
Mostly true Factual 2015 Of Lieberman, Clinton, Giuliani and Perry, only Clinton came close to winning the nomination. Factual · 2015 Other
Mostly true Factual 2015 Even this far out, national primary polls have some correlation with outcomes: a candidate near the top is a somewhat better bet to win the nomination than one near the bottom. Factual · 2015 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Factual 2015 A pitcher's high school statistics do not reveal very much, and their predictive power tends to be swamped by other indicators. Factual · 2015 Science and research methods
Resolved false Prediction 2015 In all likelihood, Trump could not win the Republican nomination with only a plurality of votes or delegates, because the Republican Party would unite against him. Prediction · 2015 Other
Resolved true Factual 2012 In a 2012 interview, Nate Silver described himself as being somewhere between a liberal and a libertarian. Factual · 2012 Their own work or organisation
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Nate Silver

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Factual AI timelines and forecasting

“As I pointed out on Wednesday, if Clinton had done only 2 percentage points better across the board, she would have received 307 electoral votes and the polls would have “called” 49 of 50 states correctly.”

Nate Silver, editor in chief, writing in FiveThirtyEight article 9 November 2016 Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else (FiveThirtyEight)

Had Clinton done 2 percentage points better across the board in 2016, she would have received 307 electoral votes and the polls would have called 49 of 50 states correctly.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

What would count as true or false

Apply a uniform 2-percentage-point improvement for Clinton to the certified 2016 state results. Accept either a 2-point gain in vote share or a 2-point shift in margin, whichever matches Silver's stated method if he gave one. Then compare the resulting state winners with the final state polling averages Silver referred to. True: the shifted results give Clinton 307 electoral votes, and the polling-average favourite wins 49 of 50 states. Mostly true: one figure holds exactly and the other is off by a small amount, for example electoral votes within about 10 of 307, or 48 states called correctly. Mixed: only one of the two figures holds and the other is off by more than that. Mostly false or false: both figures are clearly wrong under any reasonable reading of '2 points better'.

Evidence

  1. 2016 Electoral College Results National Archives (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) · 5 November 2019
    “Electoral Vote* | Winner: 304 | Main Opponent: 227 | Total/Majority: 538/270”
  2. Pollsters: We didn’t blow US election POLITICO Europe · 4 May 2017
    “In the 13 states decided by 5 points or fewer, the polls underestimated Trump’s margin against Clinton by 2.3 points.”
  3. presidential_general_election_2016.csv Prooffreader (GitHub repository election_2016_data)
    “20.0,20.0,Overall 2016 Pennsylvania Presidential Election Results,republican,True,D. Trump,1,99.8,Pennsylvania,48.8,2912941”
  4. presidential_general_election_2016.csv Prooffreader (GitHub repository election_2016_data)
    “20.0,Overall 2016 Pennsylvania Presidential Election Results,democrat,False,H. Clinton,2,99.8,Pennsylvania,47.6,2844705”
  5. presidential_general_election_2016.csv Prooffreader (GitHub repository election_2016_data)
    “15.0,15.0,Overall 2016 North Carolina Presidential Election Results,republican,True,D. Trump,1,100.0,North Carolina,50.5,2339603”
  6. 2016 United States presidential election - Wikipedia Wikipedia
    “In state-by-state tallies, Trump earned 306 pledged electors, Clinton 232. They lost respectively two and five votes to faithless electors.”
  7. 2016 United States presidential election - Wikipedia Wikipedia
    “Michigan, 0.23% (10,704 votes) – 16 electoral votes”
  8. 2016 United States presidential election - Wikipedia Wikipedia
    “Florida, 1.20% (112,911 votes) – 29 electoral votes”
  9. An Evaluation of 2016 Election Polls in the United States AAPOR Ad Hoc Committee on 2016 Election Polling
    “polls, which indicated the wrong winner in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – states that collectively were enough to tip the outcome of the Electoral College.”

Reasoning

The evidence gives Trump 306 pledged electors to Clinton's 232 (E7). It also lists margins of 0.23% in Michigan (E8) and 1.20% in Florida (E9), and shows Trump ahead 48.8% to 47.6% in Pennsylvania (E4, E5). A 2-point shift would flip all three, bringing Clinton to 297 electoral votes. Reaching 307 also depends on Wisconsin, whose margin is not in the evidence, and on whether states like North Carolina would flip. The evidence also does not show the final state polling averages, so the claim that polls would have called 49 of 50 states correctly cannot be checked: E10 only says the polls picked the wrong winner in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Cite this claim

Nate Silver, “Had Clinton done 2 percentage points better across the board in 2016, she would have received 307 electoral votes and the polls would have called 49 of 50 states correctly.” (said 9 November 2016). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_3ddea993a2cb, method 0.1.0+28da144b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_3ddea993a2cb

Claims without a verdict

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