Almost all of my Stand Firm colleagues have done it.
AND THEY’RE ALL WRONG! Here’s what I reckon will happen…
The big problem with making predictions about elections is that the heart so often gets in the way of the head. I know who I want to win next week, but will my wish get in the way of an accurate assessment. It’s not much better turning to the analysts on T.V. – many of them suffer from exactly the same problem.
So for a long time I’ve done my political predictions a different way – by looking at the betting market. There’s nothing like having your money bound up in the decision to generate a far more realistic on what is going happen. The best place, by far, for this kind of analysis is the UK site politicalbetting.com and their most recent post tells me exactly what I need to know:
So here’s the bottom line for me. Failing something massive happening between now and then I think Obama will win, and perhaps not by a close margin. It will be tighter than last time round, but still a decent lead.
So what will happen? I only have general observations but they are these:
- Domestically the economy will lumber along in a slow move towards recovery. But it will be very slow. The markets will have been hoping for a Romney win and will take a small kick at the start. I don’t think we’ll see the U.S. dollar appreciate in any form for the next 18 months.
- Israel/Iran will be a mess. I have few doubts we’ll see an Israeli attack upon Iran within 6 months, but it will happen in the context of a lack of clearly-signaled support from the U.S. Obama will end up being seen as a voice calling for “restraint” from all sides, rather than taking concrete actions to deal with Iran. The end result will be some form of proxy response by Iran through bodies such as Hezbollah (I don’t think they have the capacity to do anything else). Obama will shake his head from a safe distance and imply that Israel are to blame.
- I wonder, 24 months into a second term, if we see little economic recovery in the U.S. we might see serious introspection amongst the Democratic party on a line with the Tea Party/institutionalists split amongst the Republicans. Obama’s more radical approach might be deemed to have failed. Would be interesting then to see who emerges as a front-runner alongside Hilary.
OK, now for you to tell me all how wrong I am….
Wow-no comments? I am hopeful that you will be wrong. We will all find out Nov 6….unless Obama gets the Congress to reschedule due to power outages in the Sandy area. Or if we end up with a tie of sorts. If Obama wins his ‘godess’ is promising retribution and if he loses his sheep are promising riots. We have sunk to the level of the wierd countries around the world. No matter what we are headed for a mess.
We’ll have to wait until Tuesday evening to see who’s right, but the author of the linked article from The Atlantic seems to have the SFIF gang pegged to a tee. At least that’s how it appears to this Canadian.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/the-separate-realities-of-a-50-50-race/264427/
When I made the following comment earlier today from my iPad, it never appeared. I’ll assume it was a technical glitch (maybe it was the inclusion of a link) and not censorship, and try again from my laptop.
We’ll have to wait until Tuesday evening to find out, but this Canadian thinks that an article by James Fallows posted yesterday on The Atlantic, entitled “The Separate Realities of a ’50-50 Race'”, has the crowd at SFIF sized up very astutely.
no censorship warren!
My blogging software is currently marking every comment as spam. I’m working on it!
not particularly pleased to be proved right
Yup, I think Mr Fallows was bang on. The baser part of me would like to post at SFIF, but I’ve been banned there for a long time. 😉
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