In 2021, I made 19 predictions about the future. Since that article was published, all but one of the predictions has been settled: “The first elected female president will be a Democrat.”
Here’s a brief recap of all my predictions and how they fared:
- The first elected female president will be a Democrat. TBD
- Vice President Kamala Harris will not hold any political office in 2025. Correct.
- Support for prohibiting legal abortion will rise over the next five years. Incorrect. According to Pew Research, support for legal abortion in most or all cases has increased slightly since 2021.
- Donald Trump will run for president in 2024. Correct.
- President Joe Biden will not serve a second term. Correct.
- Ron DeSantis will be the 2024 Republican nominee for president. Incorrect.
- Republicans will take back the House of Representatives in 2022. Correct.
- The Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. Correct.
- The Democratic nominee for president will win the 2024 election. Incorrect.
- Dr. Mehmet Oz will win his high-profile Senate race in Pennsylvania. Incorrect.
- Republicans will own the Senate majority in 2024. Correct.
- Stephen Breyer will retire from the Supreme Court before Biden leaves office. Correct.
- Covid variants of the future will not get less infectious, but will get less deadly. Correct. According to Mayo Clinic, omicron, the main Covid-19 variant in the U.S., spreads more easily than the original virus and the delta variant, but causes less severe disease.
- By 2023, zero states will have mask mandates anywhere in the U.S. Correct. Hawaii was the last state with a statewide mask order, and it lifted it on March 26, 2022.
- Stacey Abrams will lose in the Georgia governor’s race. Correct.
- In the 2024 election, the economy will be the number one issue for voters. Correct.
- In the 2024 presidential election, a third-party candidate will carry the largest percentage of the popular vote since Ross Perot in 1996, who got 8.4%. Incorrect.
- The Child Tax Credit passed in 2021 will become permanent, or be renewed for a long-term, 5+ year timeframe. Incorrect.
- Fewer than 50% of American adults will be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and have a booster shot by January 1st, 2023. Correct. According to USAFacts, 34% of the population had received at least one Covid booster shot for Covid by October 19, 2022, the last date for which this data is available.
The final tally: 12 correct, 6 incorrect, for a 67% accuracy rate. Not bad, especially since I tried to make predictions that weren’t just easy layups.
As I said back in 2021, I’m not a huge fan of political prognostication. Making predictions about the future has little upside: Unless you are extremely good at it, getting things wrong about the future typically just gives your critics ammunition to say you are inept or stupid. Some people also find it irresponsible: Making predictions requires making assumptions, which is by definition speculation — something reporters and even pundits are often criticized for doing.
At the same time, I think making predictions about the future and seeing how they stack up is a good test of your own personal knowledge and understanding of the world. When someone is seeing the field clearly, they can often anticipate what’s coming, which makes any person’s accurate prediction a good signal they are worth trusting. In some ways, I want to test my own understanding of this moment by trying to predict things that are coming down the pike. Also, let’s be honest… it’s fun.
So, today, I’m going to run it back and see how I do. As I did in 2021, I’m going to accompany each prediction with a one- to two-sentence explanation and a “confidence rating” (or “CR”), so you can see how strongly I hold the belief. The scale is 1 to 10, with 10 being maximum confidence and 1 being lowest confidence.
However, I’m not including any prediction that I don’t think has a higher than 50% chance of coming true (otherwise I’d just be throwing darts randomly at the wall). So the 1–10 rating is more like a 51% to 100% rating than 0 to 100.
I’d love to hear what you think, or hear predictions of your own. So, without further ado, here they are...
