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Comment by gensym | Hacker News Reader

As a DIS shareholder, I'm livid. Losing the rights to use the best election forecasting models in the business a year before a Presidential election is monumental fuckup.

This is one screwup that can't be placed at the feet of their previous incompetent CEO.

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Do you really think it brought in that much money? I'm sure they had plenty of data when they made this decision.

In the grand scheme of Disney stuff, it probably didn’t make much money relatively speaking, but it seems weird to get rid of it right before the season where it’ll make any money.

Or after its 2016 performance they didn’t expect it to make that much so a year of salary was more than earnings.

538 was not wrong in 2016. They were actually one of the outlets that gave trump the best odds.

It’s not that they were wrong, they weren’t useful for what people want. What people expect and what is possible is out of sync and I think people misunderstood FiveThirtyEight for many years and thought it was an oracle. It’s not.

Was it really any better than NYTimes or CNN? I think it’s pretty unremarkable these days and I don’t think Disney is losing revenue or prestige.

> Losing the rights to use the best election forecasting models in the business a year before a Presidential election is monumental fuckup.

Here you go: Biden over Trump, 66% to 33%

I just saved Disney millions.

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