The oft-combative Silver, who has come under renewed scrutiny for his site’s polling selections, now faces an uncertain future as news division boss Kim Godwin reviews the publication, which has never turned a profit.

FiveThirtyEight has not backfilled key positions, including that of managing editor (Micah Cohen exited last year for data site Stacker), politics editor (Sarah E. Frostenson defected to The Washington Post), and sports editor (Sara Ziegler was poached by The New York Times).

Insiders lamented to Confider that ABC’s lack of enthusiasm in building a subscription business around FiveThirtyEight has been a “missed opportunity” that could have turned the site into a moneymaker for Disney.

But instead, ABC may look to offload the publication.

[I don’t always agree with Silver’s analysis and POV, but he’s been pretty good at analyzing and rating polls and pollsters overall. It’s been helpful to my analysis, and I’m glad to see RCP starting to build its own pollster ratings, too. That has to translate to the bottom line for ABC, of course, and perhaps a subscription service wouldn’t have paid off or covered the costs. It does seem like a missed opportunity, however. — Ed]