Nate Silver: checked claims

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

84 claims

84 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
Verdict	Kind	Said	Claim	Topic
Mostly true	Factual	28 Oct 2026	Abdul El-Sayed is not a DSA guy but is sort of a more left populist. Factual · 28 Oct 2026	AI policy and governance
Resolved true	Factual	23 Oct 2026	In 2022, Republican Phil Scott won Vermont's gubernatorial race by 47 points while Democrat Peter Welch won the Vermont Senate race by 40 points. Factual · 23 Oct 2026	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	23 Oct 2026	Jocelyn Benson's lead in Michigan gubernatorial polls is about 4.2 points larger than Abdul El-Sayed's lead in the Michigan Senate polls. Factual · 23 Oct 2026	AI policy and governance
Resolved true	Factual	12 May 2025	Winning the Senate in 2026 would require Democrats to win at least two states that are solidly red at the presidential level. Factual · 12 May 2025	Other
Delivered on time	Promise	12 May 2025	The Silver Bulletin will not publish its official 2026 midterms forecast until at least a year after May 2025. Promise · 12 May 2025	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	12 May 2025	Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats to win the Senate majority in 2026. Factual · 12 May 2025	Other
Resolved true	Factual	12 May 2025	Susan Collins won re-election in Maine in 2020 even as Donald Trump lost the presidency to Joe Biden. Factual · 12 May 2025	Other
Mixed	Prediction	8 Apr 2025	Children's toys will become much more expensive in the US because they are made in heavily tariffed countries such as Vietnam. Prediction · 8 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	8 Apr 2025	The average US tariff rate on the rest of the world was at least 23% as of April 2025. Factual · 8 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	8 Apr 2025	The two special elections held in early April 2025 were in extremely Republican-leaning, rural Florida districts. Factual · 8 Apr 2025	AI policy and governance
Resolved true	Factual	8 Apr 2025	Congress has the power to pass a law stopping President Trump's tariffs. Factual · 8 Apr 2025	AI policy and governance
Resolved true	Factual	8 Apr 2025	About 60% of Americans have investments in the stock market. Factual · 8 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	7 Nov 2024	Utah has gradually become more politically purple, due to a tech-sector workforce and Mormons not always being keen on Trump. Factual · 7 Nov 2024	Other
Mostly false	Promise	7 Nov 2024	Silver said he would probably begin with college basketball Elo ratings, with a goal of launching by the end of 2024, if not sooner. Promise · 7 Nov 2024	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	7 Nov 2024	Conservatives leaving blue states tend to move to Florida and Texas, making those states redder, and many polls did not catch up. Factual · 7 Nov 2024	Other
Resolved true	Factual	7 Nov 2024	In Silver Bulletin's final model, a Trump sweep of the seven swing states was the most common scenario, occurring in 20 percent of simulations. Factual · 7 Nov 2024	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	9 Oct 2024	John McCain had periods of strong polling in 2008, especially after the Republican Convention, but Barack Obama won in a landslide. Factual · 9 Oct 2024	Science and research methods
Mostly true	Factual	9 Oct 2024	Silver said that, if anything, there was too little panic among Democrats about 2016, and that they were dismissive of polls showing a tightening race late in the campaign and a tenuous Hillary Clinton lead in the Electoral College. Factual · 9 Oct 2024	Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true	Factual	9 Oct 2024	As of early October 2024, the US presidential election is about four weeks away. Factual · 9 Oct 2024	Science and research methods
Mostly true	Factual	9 Oct 2024	The previous Quinnipiac polls of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were quite a bit better for Harris than the latest ones. Factual · 9 Oct 2024	Science and research methods
Resolved true	Factual	9 Oct 2024	Dozens of election polls are released every week. Factual · 9 Oct 2024	Science and research methods
Mostly true	Factual	9 Oct 2024	Since Nate Silver began covering elections in 2008, Democrats have been prone to bouts of panic about the state of the horse race. Factual · 9 Oct 2024	Philosophy, ethics and society
Mostly true	Factual	8 Oct 2024	In baseball, single-run leads are relatively durable because runs tend to come in bunches and the default outcome is not to score at all. Factual · 8 Oct 2024	Science and research methods
Resolved true	Factual	13 Aug 2024	Nate Silver has moved his election forecast model back to his Silver Bulletin newsletter, where the probabilities are technically paywalled. Factual · 13 Aug 2024	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	13 Aug 2024	Millions of people died worldwide in the COVID pandemic, and life was disrupted more than at any time since World War II. Factual · 13 Aug 2024	Biosecurity
Mostly true	Factual	13 Aug 2024	Humans evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment without abundance. Factual · 13 Aug 2024	Philosophy, ethics and society
Mostly true	Factual	13 Aug 2024	In August 2024, Silver suggested, as a rhetorical question, that AI still could not fold clothes or do laundry. Factual · 13 Aug 2024	AI capabilities
Mostly true	Prediction	13 Aug 2024	Kamala Harris's bid is inherently difficult and a little bit of a long shot, but her chances of winning the 2024 presidential election are probably better than Joe Biden's were. Prediction · 13 Aug 2024	AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true	Promise	11 Sep 2023	Silver Bulletin will publish occasional paywalled posts on other topics for paid subscribers. Promise · 11 Sep 2023	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	11 Sep 2023	Nate Silver said launching FiveThirtyEight was basically his fourth career, after management consulting, professional poker, and baseball analytics. Factual · 11 Sep 2023	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	11 Sep 2023	Nate Silver turned on paid subscriptions for the Silver Bulletin newsletter by 11 September 2023. Factual · 11 Sep 2023	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Promise	11 Sep 2023	Nate Silver will hold periodic paid-subscriber-only Q&A threads on Silver Bulletin, answering questions from paid subscribers. Promise · 11 Sep 2023	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	11 Sep 2023	On Substack, subscriptions automatically renew at the price the subscriber signed up for. Factual · 11 Sep 2023	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Prediction	8 Sep 2023	Biden winning the 2024 presidential election is more likely than Trump winning, which is more likely than someone else winning. Prediction · 8 Sep 2023	Other
Mostly true	Factual	8 Sep 2023	The Wall Street Journal polls in partnership between a Republican polling firm and a Democratic polling firm. Factual · 8 Sep 2023	Science and research methods
Resolved true	Factual	8 Sep 2023	The polling firm GBAO has done millions of dollars' worth of polling for Democratic clients. Factual · 8 Sep 2023	Science and research methods
Resolved true	Factual	8 Sep 2023	Polls from around September 2015 can be found showing Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Donald Trump. Factual · 8 Sep 2023	AI timelines and forecasting
Mixed	Prediction	8 Sep 2023	Most US voters will not start paying attention to the 2024 presidential election until nine months to a year after September 2023. Prediction · 8 Sep 2023	AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true	Factual	8 Sep 2023	Polling conducted this early in a US presidential cycle has historically had little to no predictive power for the election result. Factual · 8 Sep 2023	Science and research methods
Mostly false	Prediction	8 Sep 2023	If Trump does well in Iowa and New Hampshire and Biden has no snafu, Trump and Biden could become their parties' presumptive 2024 nominees as soon as February 2024. Prediction · 8 Sep 2023	Other
Resolved true	Prediction	30 Jun 2022	Republicans are heavy favorites to win the House in the 2022 midterms, and the Senate is a toss-up. Prediction · 30 Jun 2022	AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true	Prediction	30 Jun 2022	If Republicans take control of the House in 2023, they are pretty likely to hold COVID panels or investigations. Prediction · 30 Jun 2022	AI policy and governance
Delivered on time	Promise	29 Jun 2022	Nate Silver's midterms forecast model will be published soon. Promise · 29 Jun 2022	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	24 Jun 2022	Public trust in the US Supreme Court is way down in polls as of June 2022. Factual · 24 Jun 2022	AI policy and governance
Resolved true	Prediction	9 Jun 2022	Democrats could hold the Senate in the 2022 midterms if GOP candidates are subpar in a couple of key states or Democrats win the closest races. Prediction · 9 Jun 2022	AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true	Prediction	9 Jun 2022	Democrats holding the House in the 2022 midterms would require an unlikely change in the national environment. Prediction · 9 Jun 2022	AI timelines and forecasting
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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

Back to the list

Nate Silver

Open its page

Prediction Economics and markets

“Children's toys are gonna become much more expensive because they're made in countries like Vietnam in Southeast Asia that are heavily taraffed.”

Nate Silver, podcast co-host 8 April 2025 Tariffs, Tariffs, Tariffs (Risky Business) (iHeart)

Children's toys will become much more expensive in the US because they are made in heavily tariffed countries such as Vietnam.

Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.

What would count as true or false

Judge at a one-year horizon (by April 2026) using US consumer price data for toys. Use the BLS CPI 'toys' index, or an equivalent retail toy price measure, compared with March/April 2025. True: toy prices rose substantially, at least about 10%, and analyses tie the rise to tariffs on imports from Asian producers such as China and Vietnam. Mostly true: a clear tariff-linked rise of about 6-10%. Mixed: a modest rise of about 3-6%, or a large rise only in some product segments. Mostly false: the rise is little above normal inflation (under about 3%). False: toy prices were flat or fell.

Evidence

Table Data - Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Toys in U.S. City Average FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (BLS source data) · 14 October 2026
“| 2025-03-01 | 27.478 | | 2025-04-01 | 27.513 |”
Table Data - Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Toys in U.S. City Average FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (BLS source data) · 14 October 2026
“| 2026-04-01 | 28.393 |”
Toys are facing their biggest price spike in years. Mom-and-pop toy stores tell us how they're getting by. Yahoo Finance (Business Insider) · 26 October 2026
“Toy prices have gone up 8.3% since February due to tariffs, geopolitics, and supply chain issues.”
The Slow Climb: How Tariffs Gradually Raised Retail Prices in 2025 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FEDS Notes) · 5 March 2026
“tariff pass-through to consumers between April 2025 and December 2025 has been at least 30% for goods imported from China.”

Reasoning

The BLS toys CPI (not seasonally adjusted) stood at 27.478 in March 2025 and 27.513 in April 2025 [E1], and at 28.393 in April 2026 [E2]. That is a rise of about 3.2–3.3% over the one-year horizon, which falls in the criteria's 'modest rise of about 3-6%' band. A Federal Reserve note finds substantial tariff pass-through for goods from China, though not for toys specifically [E4]. The 8.3% figure in E3 is measured 'since February' and published in October 2026, so it does not clearly cover the April 2025–April 2026 window.

Cite this claim

Nate Silver, “Children's toys will become much more expensive in the US because they are made in heavily tariffed countries such as Vietnam.” (said 8 April 2025). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_5b8ca1332878, method 0.1.0+28da144b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_5b8ca1332878

Claims without a verdict

Is a verdict here wrong, or do you speak for Nate Silver? Reply on the claim's own page, with the form at its foot (how replies work). Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts and scores are made.