FiveThirtyEight's Archive Disappears, Taking Years of Political Analysis Offline

ABC News, which owns FiveThirtyEight, has allowed the archived version of the site to expire or taken it down, removing thousands of articles on elections, polling methodology, and political forecasting that served as reference material for journalists and researchers. The loss includes not just content but the specific framing and rigor that defined how American media outlets approached quantitative political analysis for over a decade. Neither ABC nor the broader media industry has established how to preserve or maintain digital archives, even for high-profile work, leaving future researchers without primary sources for understanding how prediction culture shaped political coverage.