Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Maggie Haberman, Nate Silver Spar Over Whose 2016 Coverage Was Worse

Two of the most prominent political observers in the country got into a Twitter tiff on Tuesday over whose coverage of the 2016 presidential election was more misleading and inaccurate.

It started when Nate Silver—the former New York Times statistical wunderkind who left in 2013 to run his own ESPN-backed website, 538—noted a Haberman report on the Trump White House’s use of private emails, contrasting it with the Times’ wall-to-wall coverage of similar issues for Hillary Clinton:

Haberman hit back by mocking the pollster’s recent track record on political predictions:

But Silver responded by arguing that he had actually predicted the election better than the Times and other prognosticators:

Haberman ended the tete-a-tete by criticizing Silver for “trolling”:

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.