Nate Silver claps back at right-wing pollster for accusing him of fraud

One of the worst-performing national pollsters in the 2018 election cycle was Rasmussen Reports, a right-leaning outfit that is consistently the only one to show President Donald Trump with a net positive approval rating. In 2018, Rasmussen showed Republicans leading the generic congressional ballot by 1 point — but Democrats won the popular vote by 8.4 points.

Nonetheless, Rasmussen is proud of its methodology and particularly irritated when polling analyst and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver points out their inaccuracy. Over the past two weeks, they have twice accused him of "fraud" and characterized his analyses as "corrupt."

Silver's alleged offense? The fact that he characterized their poll as a "popular vote for US House" when the specific question they asked voters was their preference "if the elections for Congress were held today."

On Wednesday, Silver hit back at their "pathetic" attack, pointing out that it is common for pollsters to use those terms interchangeably. He also noted that including Senate results would make Rasmussen's poll even less accurate, because Democrats won the popular vote for the Senate more than the popular vote for the House.

Rasmussen promptly hit back, doubling down and calling Silver a "pathetic fraudster," which resulted in a back-and-forth in which Silver smacked down each of their talking points: