Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball and elections.

Although he gave Donald Trump, the eventual winner, a 28.6% chance of victory in the 2016 presidential election,[6] this was a higher estimate than any other scientific forecast.

[7] Much of Silver's approach can be characterized by using statistical models to understand complex social systems such as professional sports, the popularity of political platforms and elections.

[13] Silver first showed his journalism skills as a writer and opinion page editor for The Portrait, East Lansing High School's student newspaper, from 1993–1996.

[14] Silver won first place in the state of Michigan in the 49th John S. Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters in 1996.

[17] While employed at KPMG, Silver continued to nurture his lifelong interest in baseball and statistics, and on the side he began to work on his PECOTA system for projecting player performance and careers.

[26] PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) is a statistical system that projects the future performance of hitters and pitchers.

[27] On November 1, 2007, while still employed by Baseball Prospectus, Silver began publishing a diary under the pseudonym "Poblano" on the progressive political blog Daily Kos.

[29] His forecasts of the 2008 United States presidential primary elections drew considerable attention, including being cited by The New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Kristol.

[32] On June 1, 2008, Silver published a two-page op-ed in the New York Post outlining the rationale underlying his focus on the statistical aspects of politics.

[39] While maintaining his FiveThirtyEight.com website, in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column, "The Data", in Esquire[40] as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as The New York Times[41] and The Wall Street Journal.

In November 2009, ESPN introduced a new Soccer Power Index (SPi),[44] designed by Nate Silver, for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

[48][49][50]The New York Times "FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus" commenced on August 25, 2010, with the publication of "New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats".

"[57] On July 22, 2013, ESPN (a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company) announced that it had acquired ownership of the FiveThirtyEight website and brand, and that "Silver will serve as editor-in-chief of the site and will build a team of journalists, editors, analysts and contributors in the coming months.

[69][70] Shortly after FiveThirtyEight relocated to The New York Times, Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state governorships.

A companion article on his FiveThirtyEight blog, "The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama", explained how the model and the facts on the ground had changed between November and February.

[77] On the morning of the November 6, 2012, presidential election, the final update of Silver's model at 10:10 A.M. gave President Barack Obama a 90.9% chance of winning a majority of the 538 electoral votes.

At the conclusion of that day, when Mitt Romney had conceded to Barack Obama, Silver's model had correctly predicted the winner of every one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In January 2010, journalist and blogger Colby Cosh criticized Silver's performance during the Massachusetts special Senate election, saying he was "still arguing as late as Thursday afternoon that [Martha] Coakley was the clear favourite; he changed his mind at midnight that evening and acknowledged that Scott Brown had a puncher's chance."

)[94] Silver's quantitative focus on polling data, without insight from experience in political organizing or journalism, has been a recurring critique from experienced commentators.

Huffington Post columnist Geoffrey Dunn described Silver as someone who "has never organized a precinct in his life, much less walked one, pontificating about the dynamics in the electoral processes as if he actually understood them.

[96] For example, Silver was accused of applying a double standard to his treatment of Rasmussen Reports polls, such as a 2010 analysis asserting a statistical bias in its methodology.

[98] On MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough stated that Silver's prediction that day of a 73.6% chance of a win for Obama greatly exceeded the confidence of the Obama campaign itself, which Scarborough equated to that of the Romney campaign, both believing "they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning", and calling Silver an "ideologue" and a "joke".

But I do need to tell Nate I'm sorry for leaning in too hard and lumping him with pollsters whose methodology is as rigorous as the Simpsons' strip mall physician, Dr. Nick.

Silver takes a big-picture approach to using statistical tools, combining sources of unique data (e.g., timing a minor league ball player's fastball using a radar gun), with historical data and principles of sound statistical analysis; Silver argues that many of these are violated by many pollsters and pundits who nonetheless have important media roles.

It turns out we're not even close to predicting the next catastrophic earthquake or the spread of the next killer bird flu, despite the enormous amounts of brainpower trained on these questions in the past few decades".

[127] In 2009 through 2012, Silver appeared as a political analyst on MSNBC,[128] CNN[129] and Bloomberg Television,[130][131] PBS,[132] NPR,[133] Democracy Now!,[134] The Charlie Rose Show,[135] ABC News,[136] and Current TV.

[166] Silver discussed his sexuality in the context of growing up in East Lansing in an article about the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges in favor of recognizing same-sex marriage on the date of its announcement.

[169] When he took up political writing, Silver abandoned his blog, The Burrito Bracket,[170] in which he ran a one-and-done competition among the taquerias in his Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago.

[176] Silver has stated he voted for Kathy Hochul in 2022 and Kamala Harris in 2024, but has also criticized some of the Democratic Party's actions and political positions.