This measure, known as “core PCE,” is the one preferred by the Federal Reserve, and thus the one most relevant for public policy. The definition of “inflation” I’m using here is annualized rate of growth in the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy. Dylan Matthews Inflation in the US will average under 3 percent (80 percent) With the current razor-thin Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress, such a performance would translate to a near-certain Republican takeover. Data analyst David Shor told me that as of December 9, 2021, the generic ballot polling suggests Democrats losing the House popular vote, 48 percent to 52 percent. As of this writing, Democrats are slightly behind in national House polling, which suggests they’ll lose the popular vote for the House this coming November. Wlezien, along with Joseph Bafumi and Robert Erikson, has also found that polling many months ahead of midterms can be quite predictive of the eventual results. Public opinion is, as political scientist Christopher Wlezien has argued, thermostatic: The public elects one party, then finds that its policies are a little too far left or right for its tastes, and compensates by moving the other way in the midterms. With extremely rare exceptions, the party in power loses seats. Midterm elections are fairly predictable. The United States Democrats will lose their majorities in the US House and Senate (95 percent) If you want to try your hand, the site Metaculus is a good place the successor company to Tetlock’s Good Judgment Project also runs competitions. We don’t speak for Vox, or even for each other, and we hope that where you disagree, you’ll weigh in with predictions of your own. You can also read our retrospectives on our 2021 predictions, our 2020 predictions, and our 2019 predictions. (This kind of probabilistic thinking can trip people up, as Nate Silver has documented.) To say that something has an 80 percent chance of happening doesn’t mean it’s definitely happening it means that if we make five predictions at 80 percent confidence, we’re expecting to have four of them come true. As with last time, we assign each event a probability between 10 percent and 95 percent (Tetlock found that the best forecasters thought in terms of probabilities rather than simple yes/no predictions). So for the third year in a row, the staff of Future Perfect is providing predictions on the year to come. Practice makes perfect for prediction-making, but you need to do it all the time, note your successes, learn from your failures, and refine your understanding of where your forecasting abilities are strongest. He finds that the most critical skills for forecasting are thinking numerically, being open to changing your mind, updating your beliefs incrementally and frequently instead of in rare big moments, and - most encouragingly - practicing. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Philip Tetlock studies forecasting, holding tournaments to identify the skills that make people better than their peers at predicting future events. And if policymakers could rely on accurate predictions about the outcome of a foreign war or the advisability of a budget proposal, they could make much better policy decisions.īeing good at predictions is a skill like any other - you have to practice it. Will inflation continue to rise in the US and Europe, or level off? Will the Supreme Court allow states to ban abortion, eliminating legal access in red states? Will Brazil’s 212 million people be led by a left-wing populist, or a far-right anti-vaxxer?Īll of these questions matter, and preparing ourselves for potential outcomes - and having a good sense of how likely specific outcomes are - is a major part of explaining the world accurately.

Our mission is to explain the world around us to our readers, and it’s impossible to do that without anticipating what comes next. Especially if you work at a section called Future Perfect. Predicting future events is hard, but it’s among the most important tasks a journalist can perform.

Midterm elections 2022 predictions