Jul 04, 2026 23:18:00

'fivethirtyeightindex' allows you to search through approximately 40,000 past articles from 'FiveThirtyEight,' a website covering politics, economics, sports, and other topics that Disney has removed.

FiveThirtyEight , a website focusing on public opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogs, was transferred to ABC News , a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, in 2018. However, it was reported that FiveThirtyEight staff would be laid off in 2025 as part of Disney's large-scale workforce reductions. As a result, many of FiveThirtyEight's past articles have been deleted, and attempts to access older articles now redirect to ABC News. ' fivethirtyeightindex ' allows you to search the Internet Archive for 38,593 articles and images from FiveThirtyEight that were deleted by Disney.

fivethirtyeightindex
https://fivethirtyeightindex.com/

Disney erased FiveThirtyEight - by Nate Silver
https://www.natesilver.net/p/disney-erased-fivethirtyeight

FiveThirtyEight was founded in 2008 by analyst Nate Silver as a blog-based vote counting site, publishing election opinion poll data and other information. In 2013, it was acquired by ESPN , a sports channel funded by Disney, with Silver serving as editor-in-chief and a team of journalists and editors assembled. In April 2018, it was announced that FiveThirtyEight would be transferred from Disney to ABC News.

After founder Silver retired in 2023, it was reported in 2025 that ABC News would lay off FiveThirtyEight staff as part of Disney's large-scale workforce reductions. At the time, Silver wrote on his blog: 'It's tough to keep a business going when there's always pressure, almost every year, in odd-numbered years when there are no elections. But the root of the problem is that Disney wasn't particularly interested in running FiveThirtyEight as a business. They were generous in that they kept the site up for a long time and hardly interfered with our editorial process, but they didn't invest in strategists and other people who could help grow and sustain the business, and they frequently poached staff for other media outlets.'

Regarding FiveThirtyEight, Silver stated, 'The quality of the archive was gradually declining, but I thought at least most of the text-based articles would remain.' However, when Silver searched for an article he had previously written for FiveThirtyEight in May 2026, he found that the article had been deleted and accessing the link redirected him to the ABC News homepage. Silver did not comment on the matter, but his former colleague Nathaniel Rakic similarly posted on X, 'ABC News has taken all of FiveThirtyEight's articles completely offline. It's the unnecessary erasure of thousands of pages of knowledge.' ABC News has not officially commented on the deletion of these past articles.

ABC News has now taken all FiveThirtyEight articles completely offline. They now redirect to abcnews dot com/politics. A needless erasure of thousands of pages of knowledge.

— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) May 15, 2026

All of the articles published by FiveThirtyEight during the approximately 10 years from its acquisition by ESPN and transfer to ABC News until Silver's retirement were deleted. According to Silver, FiveThirtyEight published about 20 articles per week, and each article took about 20 hours to produce, including research and editing, so the articles deleted by ABC News amount to roughly 200,000 hours of work. In a blog post, Silver stated, 'We wanted to leave Disney sooner, and probably should have,' and explained how valuable the content FiveThirtyEight was producing was and the struggles involved.

The Internet Archive , which collects and preserves a vast amount of online content, has saved articles from that time, and they are still accessible as of June 2026. Normally, you can check the archive by searching the URL of the site you want to view on the Internet Archive, but the 'fivethirtyeightindex' database, which organizes FiveThirtyEight's archive information, makes it easier to search FiveThirtyEight's archives.

When you access fivethirtyeightindex, you can search for words using the search box at the very top, as shown below.

When I clicked on an article link on fivethirtyeightindex, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine opened, allowing me to read the saved page.

Additionally, from the fivethirtyeightindex homepage, you can search for articles by year and author, view a list of podcasts, and access datasets.

Furthermore, you can also view all 13,276 images and 3,138 illustrations used in the article.

However, some point out that only text and images are preserved in the archive, and that FiveThirtyEight's excellent visualizations and interactive features have been lost. Silver says that after his retirement, he will continue to publish election predictions and other content similar to what he published on FiveThirtyEight, albeit with a smaller team.