Nate Silver (born January 13, 1978) is a prominent American statistician and political analyst, best known for founding the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight, which he led until May 2023 before launching his own newsletter, Silver Bulletin, and advising the prediction market Polymarket. He gained international fame in 2009 when Time named him one of the world's 100 most influential people after his statistical model correctly predicted the winner in 49 of 50 states during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. His models also proved highly accurate in the 2012 and 2020 elections, and notably, he gave Donald Trump a higher chance of victory (28.6%) in 2016 than other major forecasters. Before politics, Silver built his reputation in sports analytics, developing the PECOTA player projection system for Baseball Prospectus and earning $400,000 playing online poker after quitting his consulting job at KPMG in 2004. A graduate of the University of Chicago with a degree in economics, Silver's career has consistently focused on using statistical models to decode complex systems, from baseball batting averages to the outcomes of national elections.