[Q&A] Political Predictions Repository

Want to make your mark and be GWJ famous?

This is a place to deposit political predictions you'd like to make in public, so that they can be easily found and referenced in the future. Thus, it is not a discussion thread; discussions of predictions should take place in other threads as conversations proceed. Explicit clarification questions and answers are fine, but "Why do you think that?" expositions should occur elsewhere so as not to clutter the repository. Predictions should be narrowly defined; testable with publicly available information at all times; have an explicit date range; and refer to events, people and places explicitly so as to leave no doubt of resolution; and they should be numbered sequentially so that they are easier to find at later dates. Edits must be clearly marked and original text preserved through the use of strike-throughs if the prediction is modified. Please avoid the use of generalities - "The President will change his mind on this topic" is less useful than "The President will change his policy from yes to no on this topic", because the latter prevents a tiny change from being claimed as success. Failed predictions should be marked in bold at the top of the post via an edit, leaving the rest intact.

28.1 Over the course of 2020, deaths in the US from COVID-19 will exceed deaths from the flu
28.1.a We'll have to estimate the extent because there will never be enough testing available to confirm. (We already estimate for the flu, so that'll still be apples-to-apples)
28.1.b When I go to check on this next year, I'll be very annoyed at the trouble I have finding statistics on this because flu season deaths are generally reported season-to-season, rather than by calendar year.

Biden narrowly wins, like n a r r o w l y wins the election, and afterwards when wonks are sifting through the numbers they conclude that it was only because a significant portion of the voting base for both candidates was... diminished... by COVID-19, but Trump’s base was slightly more affected and Biden squeaked by with a record low turnout of the youth vote.

Also, Biden steps down within his first year, citing unspecified health concerns. Some people suggest this was the plan all along, noting that his VP was the one doing the vast majority of campaigning and public appearances during the general, with Biden making only short, scripted, appearances under controlled circumstances. SNL does a cold open about this based upon a Weekend at Bernies parody, with the woman playing the VP lugging a comatose Biden around White House events. Like most SNL skits, lazy writing and under-rehearsal prevents it from being more than slightly amusing.

I predict that years from now, we will find out that the number of Covid-19 deaths was deliberately underreported in order to bolster confidence in the stock market.

Things get interesting in the USA when Trump, Sanders, and Biden, along with half of the Supreme Court, are all dead from COVID-19 by the end of April.

Coldstream wrote:

Things get interesting in the USA when Trump, Sanders, and Biden, along with half of the Supreme Court, are all dead from COVID-19 by the end of April.

Unfortunately it was the wrong half.

I'm kinda regretting deleting that long manic sh*tpost I made earlier. Turns out I was right so far.

I predict another great depression. Only this time it's not covered by the msm, because "Hey the stock markets doing fine!"

29.1 The US Economy continues to crash hard for the next month as the unemployment numbers and pre-social distancing infections rise exponentially.
29.1a Ironically, historians in the distant future will reach a consensus that the primary problem was that the US didn't do enough to halt the problem (for both economic stimulus and the pandemic) and future school children will dutifully mark the checkbox by "failure to act" as a contributing factor to the decline of the American Empire.
29.2 The economies in Asian countries that effectively managed the pandemic (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan) and China stabilize long before the US or Europe. Global economic focus shifts there for the next decade.

I thought it'd be closer, but unless things go thunderdome in the U.S., the manner in which Biden and the Democratic Party has ceded the field to President Trump during the coronavirus crisis has basically made him a mortal lock for re-election.

Although ruhk's idea sounds terrifyingly prescient.

30.1 Easter Sunday is Sunday, April 12. On average it takes 5-6 days to show symptoms (up to 14) and a few weeks more for it to run it's course. I predict a spike of deaths around May 1st.
30.1.1 I suspect that many Catholic churches will cancel Easter mass anyway, since if there's any institution that has experience weathering a global pandemic it's the Catholic church...

Esports will air on major networks on prime time.

A few more states will move to vote by mail. Repubs will whine about how many early and mail-voters probably died while their votes still got counted. It will be pointed out that if some of the swing states had expanded early voting, which repubs blocked, they would have swung red.

There will be some controversy over how accurate the census is regarding covid deaths. Florida will keep its current EV count despite general acknowledgement that its population has greatly decreased. I will also be an opportune time to gerrymander based on census data knowing that actual district population is quite different as a result of covid deaths.

Remember when people were debating what does or does not constitute a concentration camp a year or two ago?

I predict that within the next two months they’ll be debating what does or does not constitute a mass grave.

31.1 Barack Obama is arrested and put on trial for investigating Trump's campaign. (Never mind that it won't make any sense, Trump's defenses never held water in the first place.) Will either be as part of the ramp-up to November or shortly after Trump's reelection when he's feeling invincible.
31.1.a Might be Hillary or Biden on trial (instead or in addition to)
31.2 US Unemployment will hit 50 million by August. (Unless the administration starts massively fudging the numbers, like they're doing by avoiding COVID-19 testing.)

32.1 The US's efforts at containment fail, the re-openings are a disaster, and at least 200,000 are dead by October 1st.
32.2 The EU extends it's travel ban against US travelers, on January 1, 2021 Americans still won't be able to travel to Europe (with some exceptions).
32.3 In a large number of states, most grade schools and some high schools open in the fall, and we get better data on the effects on children as millions are infected.
32.4 Groups associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are labeled as terrorists (no matter if they have any actual connection to antifa organizing). FBI sweeps up a bunch of people they accuse as ringleaders. Assassinations are carried out against organizers, either by law enforcement or by vigilantes spurred on by the administration and the mayors of various cities.
32.5 The ongoing protests are the cause rising pressure on politicians, continue past the election, and cause a permanent attitude shift as American culture faces its 400-year reckoning over the ongoing legacy of slavery.
32.6 The next phase of the protests will be marked by counter-violence and counter-counter-violence, as the police and right-wing agitators attack BLM protesters and some protesters start to organize to defend themselves. This will cause much yelling online.
32.7 The media won't be interested in the massive ongoing protests until something burns down again. Or possibly if a bunch of people get shot.
32.8 Between the Facebook relatives yelling at each other over whether Black Americans are protesting in the right way against being killed and the continued presence of the virus causing a lot of people to cancel the gathering entirely, your Thanksgiving will suck.
32.9 Due to the large number of mail-in or absentee ballots, the results in many election races won't be known until December. (The presidency will either be an obvious landslide or bitterly contested until January 22nd.)
32.10 A rising political issue in 2021 is calls to modify the 13th amendment.

US residents are blocked from participating in or attending the 2022 Olympics because we still don't have our sh*t together.

When we look back at this point, I think we're going to say that:
33.1. We were already in full-blown fascism in July.
33.2. The odds of collapse and revolution happening in the future were over 50% by the end of July.
33.2a. (Understanding of odds will be skewed once thing actually happen/don't happen: Trump genuinely had a 30% chance of winning but still won; natural 20s do happen. The popular view of the odds will be wildly off base from whatever the actual odds were.)
33.3. If we have a civil war it'll look nothing like the previous Civil War with clearly divided states and will instead look really weird from an American perspective, because there aren't any clean geographic divisions. Other countries that have had more recent civil breakdowns will think it feels familiar, though.
33.3a. I don't think we'll have a civil war per se, but do anticipate violent attempts to suppress insurrection. (Said insurrection may or may not exist. You think they're going to need an actual antifa to justify murdering people?)
33.3b. Most of the career military will try to avoid getting involved for as long as possible.
33.3c. If the military does get involved, the Constitution is basically done for and we're going to have to completely rework the thing.

I'm thinking of this as from-the-perspective-of-a-historian-in-2050, but for the sake of current predictions let's say we'll check back on it the end of 2021?

Polls are underestimating Biden this time around. In 2016, the polls were actually not that far off the mark, as HRC did win the popular vote by about 2%. The polls just underestimated the white collar vote shift + the undecided split 60/40 in Trump's favor.

But the pollsters will now try to correct for the under-representation of whites without a college degree, and undecided voters don't usually end up in the incumbent's bucket, plus this tidbit of today:

According to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey, 63 percent of young Americans (under age 30) said they would “definitely” vote in the general election — higher than the 47 percent who said so in 2016. Among these young likely voters, Biden held a 60 percent to 27 percent lead.

The results will be clearcut, but of course Trump will claim that as proof of fraud on a huge scale.

Gremlin wrote:

33.3. If we have a civil war it'll look nothing like the previous Civil War with clearly divided states and will instead look really weird from an American perspective, because there aren't any clean geographic divisions. Other countries that have had more recent civil breakdowns will think it feels familiar, though.
33.3a. I don't think we'll have a civil war per se, but do anticipate violent attempts to suppress insurrection. (Said insurrection may or may not exist. You think they're going to need an actual antifa to justify murdering people?)
33.3b. Most of the career military will try to avoid getting involved for as long as possible.
33.3c. If the military does get involved, the Constitution is basically done for and we're going to have to completely rework the thing.

I'm thinking of this as from-the-perspective-of-a-historian-in-2050, but for the sake of current predictions let's say we'll check back on it the end of 2021?

The take I'm seeing online is some sort of deranged mixture of the Spanish Civil War and The Troubles, although I think Syria is probably more instructive in terms of the total fracturing of the nation between several competing groups.

Prediction: A Biden win with Obama 2008 numbers -Indiana +Arizona. Possibility that polling is underestimating Biden in which case outside chance of a 390-400 EV Biden win.

Senate 51 D with the potential for higher. +ME,CO,AZ,NC,IA -AL

I think most of the 'civil war' predictions are so, so wrong for reasons detailed in other threads, so this is about the best I can see:

1. drug cartels from Central and South America play a role none of the people comparing this to other nationalist/sectarian/etc. conflicts saw coming, because none of them spent any time thinking about basic questions like "well, most of these conflicts rely on other countries for material support, so who plays that role here?"

I still think the comparisons to other conflicts are silly, but playing devil's advocate, that's the least silly prediction I can think of for one.

~mod~

Ah, I missed one. Since this is a 2-year-old thread, If this thread becomes indistinguishable from
[Discussion] Election 2020 or the now-inaptly-named [Discussion] Hope to Remember The Trump Administration Threadas being 'transparent and honest' , we'll put this out to pasture and direct to whichever it ends up leaning towards.

IE: If it must still exist, stick to predictions and put the extra pontificating elsewhere.

Should we do a prediction thread for each calendar year, going forward? And wrap them up at the end of the year? We could wrap this one Dec 31 2020...

Last one, for tonight:

Trump claims an Electoral College victory (barely) on Election night but all votes have not yet been counter and goes all-in on a lawsuit to prevent any further votes from being counted.

Prederick wrote:

Last one, for tonight:

Trump claims an Electoral College victory (barely) on Election night but all votes have not yet been counter and goes all-in on a lawsuit to prevent any further votes from being counted.

Not really a prediction when he has already stated multiple times he will do this.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Trump will die of a low energy heart after contracting e coli from eating a Quarter Pounder from his favorite McD's, which, because the beef patties are no longer frozen, did not have an SOP in place for keeping fresh meat sufficiently chilled. He will die as he lived, the night of the election, a cowardly jackass, in sound and fury.

Time is running short on this one.

If amendments are allowed, I would change "election night" to "whenever the results are confirmed"

Mixolyde wrote:
Prederick wrote:

Last one, for tonight:

Trump claims an Electoral College victory (barely) on Election night but all votes have not yet been counter and goes all-in on a lawsuit to prevent any further votes from being counted.

Not really a prediction when he has already stated multiple times he will do this.

On the contrary, I feel like it's an incredibly bold prediction that Trump will threaten to do something and then actually do it.

My bold prediction is that sometime around April of 2022, the combination of the collapse of the consumer economy and the inability of America to service its extraordinary debt will plunge the world into a global depression. Hundreds of thousands in America alone will die.

But Jeff Bezos and the heirs to the Koch fortunes will be fine.

My own predictions in this thread are not so hot, but few have been as far off the mark as this post.

Not sure where to put this so figure it belongs in the prediction thread.

Claims of demographic destiny and White conservatives becoming a minority are officially overblown as of this election. Why? Well, Latinos are breaking in heavy numbers for Trump and Republicans.

In fact, my bold prediction is that in 20 years American born Latinos will be considered White in the same way Italians and Eastern Europeans became White in the mid-Twentieth century. Republicans will find them as a useful bulwark against Black voters, Gen Z college kids and new immigrants.

I wish this wasn’t the case. As a socially liberal/fiscally center right guy, I desperately want a Conservative party that leaves all the racial BS behind. But what I’m seeing is a new Southern strategy.

jdzappa wrote:

In fact, my bold prediction is that in 20 years American born Latinos will be considered White in the same way Italians and Eastern Europeans became White in the mid-Twentieth century. Republicans will find them as a useful bulwark against Black voters, Gen Z college kids and new immigrants.

Agreed.

Actually, same goes for any demographic, or otherwise, split you can think of. Over time, people will figure out ways to split in approximately 50/50 tribes. I am pretty sure that is just how humans work.

Prediction--Trump holds a press conference on Thursday where he announces he will not continue with any recounts, and that he lost the election, though only because of cheating. At the very same press conference, he announces the start of his presidential campaign for 2024, counting on the fact he's an active presidential candidate to shield him from any prosecution for the myriad of crimes he committed and will continue to commit.