Earlier this month I ran a 2023 Prediction Contest, with participants having to say how likely they thought forty UK and world events were to occur. In this post I summarise the entries and declare what my own predictions were.

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For those who didn’t do the survey, there were 40 questions: 20 on UK politics and economy, 10 on global politics and world events, and 10 on science, entertainment and miscellany. People could skip questions they weren’t interested in. Scoring will be by Brier Scoring.

A total of 63 people entered the competition (meaning that question 40 resolves positively). Of these, 10 wrote text answers (e.g. ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘perhaps’) in the answer fields instead of numbers, so are unable to be marked – if any of these people are reading this, I hope you still enjoyed answering the questions! That left 53 valid answers.

The average number of questions answered was 37.5 (out of 40). Within this, 60% of people answered every question and only 4 people answered fewer than 30 (the lowest being 19). The most commonly skipped questions were on entertainment – on Matilda, Stranger Things, Dune and George R. R. Martin – which makes sense, in that most people doing the quiz would likely have a reasonable interest in current affairs, but are less likely to share my taste in entertainment. The most commonly skipped non-entertainment questions were on the two bills.

In terms of people’s intuitive grasp of probability, everyone assigned an equal or higher probability that three members of the Cabinet would change than that only one would change, which is good news (the ‘equal’ were four people who put 100% chance for both). Questions 8 and 9, however, seemed to confuse quite a lot of people, which is probably a flaw in how they were phrased. A good chunk of people assigned a cumulative probability to these events of greater than 100%, or implicitly assigned a zero or negative percentage chance to Labour leading the Conservatives by 11-19%. I’m sorry for phrasing these in a confusing way.

Last year, Scott Alexander found that simply averaging the guesses of all participants produced a result – the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ – that was more accurate than 84% of individual entries. Accordingly, in the table below I’ve shown both my own prediction (for the record), the Wisdom of Crowds guess, and also the standard deviation.

On a lot of questions I am pretty aligned with the Wisdom of Crowds, but on eight I’m more than one standard deviation away which, I’ll be honest, is a bit worrying and more than I expected. In a move which I suspect I may well regret in a year’s time, I’ll try to explain my reasoning for these 8:

• Labour will have a 10 point or lower lead over the Conservatives (I predicted much less likely). Rationale: The gap is currently 21% and while I think it will close a bit, I’m pessimistic it will close that much over the next year. I’d love to be wrong though!
• Free Speech Bill will be passed (I predicted much more likely). Rationale: The overwhelming majority of Government-backed Bills pass; the prior for passing should be high. This Bill has already been through the Commons and the Lords, so only ping-pong is left, meaning even Parliamentary time is not much of an issue.
• Strikes Bill will pass (I predicted much more likely). Rationale: see above on Government Bills. Also, although this is controversial and still requires time, it’s a flagship piece of Government legislation.
• Inflation will be below 5% (I predicted much more likely). The OBR is (or was, when I completed this0 predicting inflation to be below 4% by the end of the year; they could be a bit wrong and this would still resolve positively.
• Interest rates will not exceed 4% (I predicted much less likely). Rationale: they’re already at 3.5% and people say the Bank is likely to raise them again next month. The current prediction is for them to peak at 4.5%.
• Borrowing this coming year to be lower than last year (I predicted much more likely). Rationale: the deficit is predicted to fall, even if the debt continues to rise. I’m predicting the Government will spend much less on energy support. On reflection, I may have been overconfident about this one though).
• Biden to announce he won’t stand in 2024 (I predicted much less likely). Rationale: I have to admit, I don’t know why so many people think he won’t stand. I know he’s old, but presidents almost always stand again, he’s been pretty successful and just had excellent mid-terms. My assumption is unless he’s prevented by death or illness, he’ll stand.
• Stranger Things Season 5 to be released (I predicted much less likely). Rationale: they’re not starting production until this summer and the release is anticipated to be in 2024.

We will see in a year’s time who is most accurate! Regardless of how accurate we all turn out to be, thank you to everyone who took part – and I hope you had fun.

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