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May 1, 2023, 1:34pm EDT
mediaNorth America

ABC News struggles to replace Nate Silver

Krista Kennell/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
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The Scoop

ABC News is preparing to replace Nate Silver and rejigger his election forecasting model, which the 538 founder is taking with him when he leaves the news organization at the end of his contract.

According to two sources with knowledge of the situation, ABC executives were slow to realize that the company only owned some of the models that 538 used to forecast major elections, and that many were on rent from Silver as part of the initial deal to bring the data journalism site to ESPN ten years ago.

“They have put very very very little bandwidth into managing 538, and they seem pretty clueless about who-owns-what IP questions,” one person familiar told Semafor.

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