Nate Silver Rails Against Huffington Post in Twitter Rampage

Nate Silver blasted the Huffington Post on Saturday night in response to an article that the site posted accusing him of “changing the results of polls,” The Hill reported.

“This article is so fucking idiotic and irresponsible,” Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight, wrote.

This article is so fucking idiotic and irresponsible. https://t.co/VNp02CvxlI

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016

The article, written by Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post, accused Silver of “punditry” in this election cycle.

“The short version is that Silver is changing the results of polls to fit where he thinks the polls truly are, rather than simply entering the poll numbers into his model and crunching them,” Grim wrote in the article.

Silver fired back in a series of several tweets, saying that FiveThirtyEight’s polling methods were based off of empirical evidence.

The reason we adjust polls for the national trend is because **that's what works best emperically**. It's not a subjective assumption.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016

Every model makes assumptions but we actually test ours based on the evidence. Some of the other models are barley even empirical.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016

The problem is that we're doing this in a world where people—like @ryangrim—don't actually give a shit about evidence and proof.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016

The philosophy behind 538 is: Prove it. Doesn't mean we can't be wrong (we're wrong all the time). But prove it. Don't be lazy.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016

Silver then ended his tweetstorm with a tweaked line from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s playbook, saying “When you go low, I go high 80 percent of the time, and knee you in the balls the other 20 percent of the time.”

When you go low, I go high 80% of the time, and knee you in the balls the other 20% of the time.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016

Silver said Sunday that Hillary Clinton was one state away from losing the election on ABC’s This Week, Breitbart reported.

“The electoral college map is less solid for Clinton than it was for Obama four years ago, where four years ago we had Obama ahead in states totaling 320 some electoral votes,” Silver said. “Clinton has 270 so one state away from potentially losing the Electoral College.”