Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in a recent fundraising email lied about election forecaster FiveThirtyEight's predictions in multiple Senate races, FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver said Tuesday.
"Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight just announced that Democrats are poised to win SIX Senate seats this November," Pelosi wrote in the email, incorrectly saying the site predicts Democratic victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio.
"This is straight-up misinformation," Silver tweeted in response. "We have Democrats as heavy underdogs in Florida and Ohio."
Pelosi, who routinely sends out emotionally charged campaign emails, has a long history of making false or misleading statements. Pelosi recently attempted to justify skyrocketing inflation under President Joe Biden by saying that "when unemployment goes down, inflation goes up," a claim that PolitiFact rated mostly false, and blaming Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Inflation started surging under Biden months before Russia's invasion, the Washington Free Beacon has reported.
Silver's FiveThirtyEight model projects that Republicans have a 54 percent chance of winning the Senate. The model rates Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada as tossups. The election forecaster says that Republicans have a 90 percent chance of victory in Ohio and a 94 percent chance in Florida. Of the states Pelosi mentioned in her email, New Hampshire is the only one that FiveThirtyEight predicts will stay blue.
Silver's model for the House predicts that Pelosi will lose her job as speaker, forecasting that Republicans have an 87 percent chance of retaking the chamber.