Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin
Nate Silver's subscription forecaster; its generic ballot aggregate is the industry's most-cited midterm indicator.
Last refreshed: 9 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why is Silver Bulletin eight points above Emerson and six above Ipsos on the same ballot?
Timeline for Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin
Mentioned in: June hiring stalls as jobs turn soft
US Midterms 2026Reported the generic ballot easing to D+6.1 on 30 June
US Midterms 2026: Democratic ballot lead eases to D+6.1Published generic ballot average of D+6.2 on 20 June, down from D+6.9 on 28 May
US Midterms 2026: Pollsters split eight points on the HouseMentioned in: Cook moves seven seats, none back
US Midterms 2026Recorded D+6.9 generic ballot average on 28 May, highest of the cycle
US Midterms 2026: Generic ballot hits D+6.9, above 2018 wave markWhat is the generic congressional ballot showing in 2026?
What is the generic ballot and why does it matter?
What is the generic ballot showing in 2026 and what does it mean for the House?
Background
Silver Bulletin is a subscription polling and election forecasting publication founded by Nate Silver after he departed FiveThirtyEight in 2023. Nate Silver built his reputation through FiveThirtyEight, the data-journalism outlet he founded in 2008 and sold to ESPN/ABC News, correctly calling the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections at the state level. Silver Bulletin uses a model-driven approach, weighting polls by historical accuracy, correcting for house effects, and aggregating across multiple pollsters to produce a composite estimate. It charges a subscription fee, distinguishing it from free aggregator sites. Silver's models have faced criticism in recent cycles for underestimating Republican polling errors, a factor he has acknowledged in methodological revisions.
Silver Bulletin is a subscription polling and election-forecasting publication founded by Nate Silver after he departed FiveThirtyEight in 2023. Its generic congressional ballot aggregate is the most-cited single indicator of the 2026 national political environment. The aggregate climbed from R+3.3 in January 2025 to D+5.8 on 28 April 2026, then to a cycle high of D+6.9 on 28 May, exceeding the D+6.5 margin that delivered Democrats a 40-seat House gain in 2018.
By 20 June 2026 the aggregate had eased slightly to D+6.2, but the more significant development was a pronounced split between aggregators and institutional pollsters. NBC, Marquette, and Ipsos clustered at D+3 to D+5; Reuters/Ipsos stood at D+3; Emerson at D+11. Silver Bulletin's D+6.2 sat well above the institutional cluster, reflecting different likely-voter screening and partisan-weighting assumptions. Harry Enten of CNN placed the threshold for a Democratic House majority at roughly D+3 to D+4 given the Republican redistricting edge, making the institutional readings marginal and the Silver Bulletin figure comfortably inside wave territory.
The aggregate eased further to D+6.1 on 30 June 2026 , then ticked back up slightly to D+6.3 in its 6 July reading, published 8 July, keeping the aggregate in the same D+6 band it has held since late May. The measurement-divergence story now shapes how downstream forecasters weight it: Cook Political Report moved the Alaska Senate to Toss-up on 1 July without citing any single pollster, suggesting the full distribution of readings, not Silver Bulletin alone, is driving structural ratings changes.