Prediction

Trump has 91% chance of winning second term, professor’s model predicts

President Donald Trump has a 91 per cent chance of winning the November 2020 election, according to a political science professor who has correctly predicted five out of six elections since 1996.

“The Primary Model gives Trump a 91 percent chance of winning in November,” Stony Brook professor Helmut Norpoth told Mediaite on Tuesday.

Mr Norpoth told the outlet that his model, which he curated in 1996, would have correctly predicted the outcome for 25 of the 27 elections since 1912, when primaries were introduced.

The model calculates the winning candidate based on early presidential nominating contests and placing an emphasis on how much enthusiasm candidates are able to generate early in the nominating process, the professor said.

“The terrain of presidential contests is littered with nominees who saw a poll lead in the spring turn to dust in the fall,” Mr Norpoth said.

Prediction

I predict Boris Johnson will be out by Christmas. He was never up to the task of leading this country

Every time I see Boris Johnson, I ask myself how on earth he got the job. Then I remember that it was luck, guile, and the big red bus and the stuff about the NHS getting £350m a week extra – the promise that never was.

So that question pretty much answers itself. I suppose what I really mean is that it’s just begun to dawn on me that he isn’t actually very good at the job. The posh accent and the classical references disguise it a bit, but the truth is starting to show through. He’s just not up to it.

Remember what close colleague and “friend” Michael Gove said of him back in the 2016 Tory leadership debacle? “I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead”. Right first time, Gove.

Every bumbling performance at prime minister’s questions, each stumbling appearance at a coronavirus media conference, each bit of misguided spin that emanates from Downing Street, all the “ramped up” insincere promises and the hasty U-turns serve only to build up the evidence that we have somehow contrived to place a clown with the emotional maturity of a toddler in charge of dealing with the worst pandemic in 100 years.

Prediction

U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says

According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

The senior US government officials who wrote the report are from several key agencies including the Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA. The study called on the Pentagon to urgently prepare for the possibility that domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse due to the impacts of climate change as we near mid-century.

The report was commissioned by General Mark Milley, Trump's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the highest-ranking military officer in the country (the report also puts him at odds with Trump, who does not take climate change seriously.)

The report, titled Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army, was launched by the U.S. Army War College in partnership with NASA in May at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. The report was commissioned by Gen. Milley during his previous role as the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was made publicly available in August via the Center for Climate and Security, but didn't get a lot of attention at the time.

The two most prominent scenarios in the report focus on the risk of a collapse of the power grid within “the next 20 years,” and the danger of disease epidemics. Both could be triggered by climate change in the near-term, it notes.

Prediction


Warning to Democrats: Economy points to a Trump win

President Donald Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry and trailing several leading Democratic candidates by significant margins in early national polls.

But according to a historically accurate model maintained by research firm Moody’s Analytics, he remains a strong favorite to win a second term based on economic trends in key swing states. As Democrats gather on stage in Ohio on Tuesday night for their fourth debate, the Moody’s model suggests they’ll need to take aim at Trump’s record on the economy to overcome his advantage.

The Moody’s model — which was perfect from 1980 until narrowly missing the 2016 outcome — finds that Trump would win fairly solidly based on three different sets of state-level economic and political data. One that focuses on pocketbook issues such as gas prices, home prices and personal income finds that, as of now, Trump would romp to a second term with 351 electoral votes.

“Democrats need to be on high alert. If history is any guide and we get typical turnout, they are going to lose,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and lead architect of the model. “They need to be at DEFCON 1 or it’s likely Trump will be reelected.”

Prediction

Opinion: Contrarian who called the 2008 housing crash expects a global recession this year

All at once, storm clouds are gathering over the world economy.

The International Monetary Fund has cut its estimates for global growth in 2019, citing concerns about weakness in Europe. China just had its slowest GDP growth since 1990, and President Xi Jinping reportedly has held secret meetings warning Communist Party leaders to prepare for “black swan” events that could derail China’s economy.

In the U.S., the still-unresolved tariff war with China and the stalemated government shutdown may be having a bigger impact on the economy than many anticipated. Ian Shepherdson, chief economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics, told Politico’s Ben White that when the ripple effects of these big events are factored in, first-quarter U.S. GDP growth could drop to zero.

Still, economists overwhelmingly expect slower growth this year but no recession. More than half of those surveyed by The Wall Street Journal in January saw recession coming by 2020.

Prediction

Steve Bannon Predicts "Astounding Victory" For House And Senate Republicans In November

In an interview on ABC's 'This Week' former Trump "Campaign CEO" Steve Bannon reveals that he doesn't talk to President Trump anymore but if Trump listens to his "inner voice" he will win an "astounding victory" in the November midterms.

"I talk to him every day through the press and through the media. By the way, he’s got too many guys talking to him right now. All he’s got to do is listen to his own inner voice."

"Write this down," Bannon said. "That’s going to lead to an astounding victory in November. He is going to run the tables in the House and he’s going to pick up a couple seats in the Senate."

Prediction

Scientist predicts our future will be ‘worse than extinction’

A Russian theoretical physicist has predicted a grim future for our civilization that “is even worse than extinction.”

Alexander Berezin, a highly-cited scientist from Russia’s National University of Electronic Technology Research, outlined his bleak prediction in an article entitled 'First to enter, last to leave: a solution to Fermi's paradox'.

Fermi’s paradox is the contradiction that’s been maddening scientists for years. The idea that if the universe is so vast, practically guaranteeing the existence of extraterrestrial life, then why hasn’t humanity ever detected a trace of it?

Berezin theorizes that alien civilizations may have not reached the technological advancement needed to be detectable by Earthlings – like space travel or interstellar communication.

Berezin also says that those who first accomplish interstellar travel would be naturally tasked with eradicating “all competition to fuel its own expansion.” Or in other words: whoever finds the other first will have the power of the universe.

While that dog-eat-dog theory may seem harsh, Berezin says total destruction of other life forms likely won’t be a conscious obliteration. "They simply [will] not realize, in the same way that a construction team demolishes an anthill to build a property because it has no incentives to protect it," writes Berezin.

Prediction

Preventive Priorities Survey: 2018

This year, eight conflicts were considered "top tier" risks:

• military conflict involving the United States, North Korea, and its neighboring countries;
• an armed confrontation between Iran and the United States or one of its allies over Iran's involvement in regional conflicts and support of militant proxy groups, including the Yemeni Houthis and Lebanese Hezbollah;
• a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure and networks;
• a deliberate or unintended military confrontation between Russia and North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, stemming from assertive Russian behavior in Eastern Europe;
• an armed confrontation over disputed maritime areas in the South China Sea between China and one or more Southeast Asian claimants—Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, or Vietnam;
• a mass casualty terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland or a treaty ally by either foreign or homegrown terrorist(s);
• intensified violence in Syria as government forces attempt to regain control over territory, with heightened tensions among external parties to the conflict, including the United States, Russia, and Iran;
• increased violence and instability in Afghanistan resulting from the Taliban insurgency and potential government collapse.

Prediction

China & Russia to crash bitcoin & trade oil in yuan: Saxo Bank's ‘outrageous’ predictions for 2018

Danish Saxo Bank is famous for making ‘outrageous’ predictions for the year ahead. This year, the bank predicts Russia and China will crack down on bitcoin and ditch the US dollar from oil trading.

Bitcoin collapse

The bank predicts that next year bitcoin will triple in value to $60,000 with a market capitalization exceeding $1 trillion. After that, Russia and China will join together to attack it.

“The rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been one of the most spectacular phenomena of financial markets in recent years. Bitcoin will continue to rise – and rise high – during most of 2018, but Russia and China will together engineer a crash,” the Danish bank predicts. This will lead to bitcoin collapsing to $1,000 by 2019, according to Saxo.

Russia & China ditch dollar in oil settlements

This is not the only cooperation between Beijing and Moscow next year, says Saxo Bank, which expects China to roll out a yuan-denominated oil contract, “a move with tremendous geopolitical and financial consequences.”

“In recent years, the US WTI crude oil contract has been increasingly sidelined by the seaborne Brent crude oil contract as the global benchmark against which many other oil qualities are priced. China, meanwhile, has already become far and away the world’s largest crude oil importer and many key exporters – led by Iran and Russia – are more than happy to transact in yuan terms,” Saxo predicts.

Prediction

German military study: EU collapse conceivable worst case

The German military considers the disintegration of the European Union and the West over the next few decades a possibility, according to an internal report seen by Der Spiegel.

The 102-page “Strategic Perspective 2040” report — adopted in late February and kept under wraps since then — outlines six scenarios for how social trends and international conflicts are likely to play out and influence German security, the weekly magazine reported Saturday.

t includes a worst-case scenario in which the EU unravels and Germany is forced into a “reactive mode.” In this projection, the international order falls apart after “decades of instability,” value systems lose their influence and globalization grinds to a halt.

“EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, other states have left the community, Europe has lost its global competitiveness,” the report reads, according to Der Spiegel. “The increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone world has dramatically changed the security environment of Germany and Europe.”

Prediction

“When the ATMs Go Dark in America…

those who survive (and those who prosper) will all have one thing in common…”

I have grandchildren who live here in the United States.

That’s why I came back.

You see, I began writing this on an isolated ranch I own in the Andes Mountains. It’s 9,247 ft. above sea level, and a six-hour trek in 4-wheel drive from the nearest city.

I realize that must make me sound eccentric. And I can see why.

But when you come from nothing and grow up in a farming family, you understand that life can turn from good to bad very quickly…

…that the line separating our comfortable lives from disaster is thinner than most people care to know…

…that things are not always what they seem.

That’s what brought me out to that ranch: because things in America today are not what they seem.

And I believe that you and I are about to experience a shock not seen in this country in 200 years (the last time was in the 1800s).

PredictionThe Las Vegas Attack Will Inspire Copycats

The Las Vegas Attack Will Inspire Copycats

Given the high death toll in Las Vegas, copycat attacks are bound to follow. One of the factors that drives terrorism, after all, is the success of past attacks.

Early anarchist ideologues saw terrorism as a form of propaganda. In 1885, Johann Most famously declared, "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda." Indeed, in many ways, it seems as if successful attacks are able to influence future attacks more than simple propaganda does. For instance, even though al Qaeda began calling for grassroots jihadists to conduct vehicular assaults in the second edition of its Inspire magazine, published in 2010, and despite the ease of conducting such attacks, only six were recorded outside Israel between 2010 and 2016. However, since the deadly and well-publicized Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, in 2016, at least 10 vehicular assaults have been committed by jihadists in North America and Europe (as well as two others not connected with jihadists). Success, and the heavy media coverage that accompanies it, clearly breeds imitation.

Prediction

Commentary: Yes, 2016 was bad. Next year could be worse

The killing of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey on Monday evening might have prompted knee-jerk comparisons to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, but it almost certainly won’t spark a World War One-type conflict. The lethal truck attack that killed 12 in Berlin a few hours later, however, could ratchet up the prospect of yet another political shock in Europe.

2016 looks set to keep throwing out unexpected, often brutal surprises right to its end. If 1989 – the year the Berlin wall fell – was the point at which globalization, liberal democracy and the Western view of modernity was seen to triumph, the year now concluding might yet be seen as when the wheels came off.

That may be a dramatic overstatement. However, the electoral surprises of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump – as well as dozens of other examples across the globe – are stark reminders of just how much consensus has unraveled. The next year could see a step back towards moderation. But it could equally see things spiral further out of control.

Prediction

How Trump's Election Victory Will Galvanize Kindred Spirits in Europe

To a great extent, Trump's victory and the success of the United Kingdom's referendum to leave the European Union are the result of the same trend. Emerging political forces in the United States and Europe blame globalization for the loss of jobs and present immigration as a threat to national identity and security. Their message resonates with people who do not see a benefit in free trade or flexible migration and who feel as if traditional parties do not understand their plight. Mainstream media outlets and opinion polls largely underestimated that segment of the electorate in the runup to both the U.S. election and the Brexit referendum. That they failed to foresee Trump's victory or that of the "leave" camp demonstrates the extent to which these emerging social and political trends have been minimized, disregarded or misunderstood.

The same political upheaval could manifest again over the course of Europe's busy 2017 electoral season. In March, the Netherlands — a prominent economic and political power in Northern Europe — will hold general elections. (Italy could join them if constitutional reforms fail in a December referendum, triggering early elections.) France, which boasts the Continent's second-largest economy, will hold presidential votes in April and May, followed by legislative elections in June. Toward the end of the year, the European Union's greatest political and economic force, Germany, will hold general elections in October.

Prediction

Lessons for Marketers: Why Big Data got the US Election Wrong

How could so many very, very smart people armed with the best technology in the world have been so wrong? The answer is rooted in a simple, basic fact. People are not good at predicting their future behavior. We can tell you about our past actions and why we took them. We can tell you how we feel about things that are happening now. Somehow, however, when it comes to telling you what we are going to do even if the action is just a few hours away, we are utterly unreliable.

The Clinton team (and the rest of the world) just re-learned this old lesson. Implications for marketers are clear:

1) Past data is a gold mine, but it is not magical. We should amass as much information about past behaviors and attitudes as possible. Cohort data (how people like us behave and feel) enriches this backwards-looking data significantly. Past data can also be predictive, but the reliability of these predictions depends up consistency of ALL conditions. As soon as something changes in the environment of the subjects, all bets are off...

Prediction

An artificial intelligence system that correctly predicted the last 3 elections says Trump will win

The polls have consistently showed Hillary Clinton with a lead over Donald Trump in recent weeks, but an artificial intelligence system has a different prediction for the outcome of the presidential election.

The system, called MogIA, uses 20 million data points from online platforms like Google, YouTube, and Twitter to come up with its predictions, according toCNBC. MogIA correctly predicted the past three presidential elections as well as the Democratic and Republican primaries.

"While most algorithms suffer from programmers/developer's biases, MoglA aims at learning from her environment, developing her own rules at the policy layer and develop expert systems without discarding any data," Sanjiv Rai, the founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai who developed MogIA, told CNBC.

Prediction

Professor who’s predicted 30 years of presidential elections correctly is doubling down on a Trump win

Last month, the man who's tried to turn vote prediction into a science predicted a Trump win.

Allan J. Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University, said Democrats would not be able to hold on to the White House.

In the intervening weeks, the campaign was rocked by a series of events. The release of the Access Hollywood tape obtained by The Washington Post was followed by accusations from a growing list of women of various improprieties on Trump's part, ranging from verbal abuse and harassment to outright sexual assault. Fix founder Chris Cillizza named Trump the winner of the inauspicious “Worst Week in Washington” award for four weeks running. At the same time, WikiLeaks released internal Clinton campaign emails, and the U.S. government flatly accused the Kremlin of being involved. And let's not forget those presidential debates.

Prediction

Wall Street bets on anything, even big weather events

When it comes to trading weather events, the CEO of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald said Friday he wants a "natural market environment" that benefits both speculators and traders looking to supplement their insurance alike.

Shawn Matthews said his firm is creating a "building environment" for those looking to make money off a product like the weather.

In June, Cantor Fitzgerald set up TradeWx.com, a website that allows traders to estimate and trade on where a given storm will hit land. If their guess is within 75 miles of landfall, their contract pays off. In light of Hurricane Matthew, the website has seen a record number of contracts.

Prediction

The CIA Says It Can Predict Social Unrest as Early as 3 to 5 Days Out


Last year around this time, CIA stood up its first new office since 1963—the Directorate for Digital Innovation—a seismic shift for the agency that legitimized the importance of technology, including big data and analytics.

According to Deputy Director for Digital Innovation Andrew Hallman, the man tapped by CIA Director John Brennan to run the digital wing, that digital pivot is paying off.

The agency, Hallman said, has significantly improved its “anticipatory intelligence,” using a mesh of sophisticated algorithms and analytics against complex systems to better predict the flow of everything from illicit cash to extremists around the globe. Deep learning and other forms of machine learning can help analysts understand how seemingly disparate data sets might be linked or lend themselves to predicting future events with national security ramifications.

Prediction

Trump is headed for a win, says professor who has predicted 30 years of presidential outcomes correctly

Nobody knows for certain who will win on Nov. 8 — but one man is pretty sure: Professor Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every presidential election since 1984.
When we sat down in May, he explained how he comes to a decision. Lichtman's prediction isn't based on horse-race polls, shifting demographics or his own political opinions. Rather, he uses a system of true/false statements he calls the "Keys to the White House" to determine his predicted winner.
And this year, he says, Donald Trump is the favorite to win.
The keys, which are explained in depth in Lichtman’s book “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2016” are:
Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections...