A PREDICTION “is an informed statement about what is likely to happen in the future, based on available information, data, or analysis. It often involves reasoning and can be supported by evidence or prior knowledge.” In contrast, a guess “refers to making an assumption or estimation without sufficient information or evidence. It often relies on intuition or random choice rather than analytical reasoning.”
Right. But applied to U.S. presidential elections since 2016, “prediction” seems to be a more formal word for “guesstimate.”
For the true believers, to be sure, there’s no doubt that their candidate will win. They are “wishcasting” — like “die-hard” New Yorkers or Bostonians when asked to “predict” the victor of a Yankees-Red Sox game. Or as anti-Trump pundit Bill Maher would put it, Kamala Harris should win because he, Maher, predicted it, and if she loses “it’s gonna make me look bad.” Maher also said that after announcing his prediction a month ago, a lot of people have asked him, “Are you sure?” Maher said, “No I’m not f***** sure! … Of course I’m not sure. But that’s my gut.” He, at least, is honest.
Many Republican and Democratic operatives in the U.S. are saying one thing in public and another in private. Politics is their bread and butter, and they must remain in the good graces of their party, whichever it is. But whenever they are asked, off the record, about the likely election result in November, the usual answer is: it’s all up in the air.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is running as if it’s 2016 again, but without committing Hillary’s mistakes in the campaign’s final stretch while Donald Trump tries to avoid his campaign’s missteps in 2020.
On the record, Republicans and Democrats continue to assure us why their presidential candidate should and will win.
In his delightful book published in 1995, “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper,” mathematics professor John Allen Paulos said he found reading “old newspaper analyses, government press releases and bygone bits of punditry both sobering and entertaining. They often seem to presuppose that political and economic matters are, with a little thought and perhaps some calculation, more or less predictable. Obviously, such matters are not very predictable, and there are some surprising mathematical reasons why they are not.”
Paulos said these mathematical reasons involve the often unanticipated behavior of many interacting variables in complex nonlinear systems. These “ensure that much economic and political commentary and forecast are fatuous nonsense, no more on target than the farmer marksman with hundreds of chalked bull’s eyes on the wall of his barn, each with a bullet hole in its center. When asked how he could be so accurate, the farmer…admitted that he first made the shot and then drew the bull’s-eye around it.”
According to Paulo, “stripped to their essence, many social forecasts may be paraphrased in one or two ways. The first is ‘Things will continue roughly as they have been.’ When pressed, the pooh-bahs and prognosticators admit a further clause: ‘until something changes.’ The other way is equivalent, but puts the emphasis on the change: ‘Things will change.’ Here again, when pressed, the pooh-bahs and prognosticators admit a further clause, ‘after an indeterminate period of stability.’ But THINGS TO STAY THE SAME UNTIL CHANGE or THINGS TO CHANGE EVENTUALLY are too obviously hollow and unfalsifiable to be suitable for the headline of a news analysis or a columnist’s essay. Their emptiness has to be disguised.”
In the case of this year’s U.S. presidential election, a typical analyst’s forecast can be summed up thus: Harris or Trump will win — unless it’s the other way around.
When pressed, the more candid commentator like Maher might admit that his prediction is essentially based on what his gut tells him. But notice that our guts usually “tell us” what we want to hear — and Republican and Democratic guts say different things.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has reported (breathlessly) that “America Is Having a Panic Attack Over the Election. Voters see permanent damage to the country if their candidate loses….”
“With little more than a week to go in what could be the closest presidential election in American history, the nation is on edge,” said the usually level-headed Wall Street Journal. “Partisans on both sides are paralyzed with suspense and apprehension as they look to white-knuckle it through the coming days. The candidates have amped up their appeals to an apocalyptic degree as the campaigns frantically work to turn out the vote. As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both campaigned in [a] crucial swing state, voters broadly said this election feels different than those that came before — less a regular democratic exercise than a national panic attack, a twilight clash that could end democracy for good.”
One of the best ways to gain a clearer perspective on current events, however alarming they may seem, is to be a student of history. And American history clearly tells us that the nation has been through truly dark if not calamitous periods, but has emerged whole if not better each time. Of course, you can always bet against that — but it’s like betting against the house, which, so far, has always won.
In my case, on Nov. 5th, I plan to re-read John Stossel’s 2020 op-ed, “Don’t Freak Out About the Election”:
“Worried about Tuesday?
“Remember: The most important parts of life happen outside politics.
“Love, friendship, family, raising children, building businesses, worship, charity work — that is the stuff of life.”
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