As is tradition, before recounting how bad I was at predicting what 2016 would bring, here is the scorecard from the annual predictions during past years:
- 2009: 31% correct (5 of 16)
- 2010: 44% correct (7.5 of 17)
- 2011: 50% correct (7 of 14)
- 2012: 40% correct (6 of 15)
- 2013: 11% correct (1.5 of 14)
- 2014: 12% correct (1.5 out of 13)
- 2015: 33% correct (5 out of 15)
Here are the results of the 2016 predictions:
- Election predictions:
- Hillary Clinton will win the Presidency with a similar margin to Obama’s 332-206 victory in 2012.
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Marco Rubio will be the Republican nominee. Donald Trump, currently far and away the frontrunner, will win South Carolina and at most three other states.
It hurts to be so very, very wrong.
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There are 34 Senate seats up for grabs, 24 of which are held by Republicans. Democrats will pick up between four and seven seats.
Democrats picked up two seats. Had slightly fewer Trump voters shown up, or had just a few more Hillary voters gone to the polls, my predictions would have been spot-on, but as it is I’m now zero-for-three.
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Marijuana will be legalized in California in 2016, as well as in at least five other states.
California legalized recreational marijuana, as did Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts. Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas legalized medical marijuana, but since the prediction was for six states to legalize recreational pot the correct prediction count remains at zero.
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Tesla will make minor but noticeable style changes to the Model-S.
Model-S got a new front-end in April, and I finally got on the board with a correct prediction!
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Leonardo DiCaprio will win best actor at the Oscars.
Not only do Leo and I share the fact that we are both winners, but we are also both incapable of growing facial hair that doesn’t appear to be infested with mange. The scorecard moves to two-for-six.
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The Black Lives Matter organization will have mostly disappeared from headlines by the end of the year.
BLM is still around, although they are getting far fewer headlines. My hope had been that they would be replaced with a more effective organization, but instead BLM seems like it might instead be reforming itself to be more effective. An incorrect prediction on my part, but a hopeful development if they can transform into a group that is known less for blocking freeways and chasing Bernie Sanders offstage, and instead one that can meaningfully bring people together to address important racial issues.
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This is a prediction that I actually expect will be wrong, but I’ll say that the 2016 US Olympic Men’s basketball team will lose one of their games.
Does it count that I got the “I actually expect will be wrong” part correct? It doesn’t make sense that a team with vastly better talent than its competition isn’t making Olympic basketball look like the Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals, but while this year’s squad had a few close calls, to their credit they did what they needed to do and went undefeated on their way to a gold medal.
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Obama’s job approval numbers, currently at about 47%, will rise to between 53-57% as his term ends.
His job approval numbers have been at the high end of my prediction, even hitting 58% in one poll, but I’m still going to count this prediction as correct. At least forty percent of the country obviously disagrees, but I think he’s been by far the best president of my lifetime.
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Microsoft’s plans to force upgrades to Windows 10 will backfire spectacularly.
I have no idea what happened on this one – either Microsoft backed off of their plans, or I misunderstood, or something went screwy, because they just didn’t force upgrade people. If I awarded negative points then this prediction would score a minus-one for being so utterly, completely wrong.
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Batman v. Superman won’t finish in the top ten domestic box office for 2016.
This script was so flawed that the key conflict between the main characters was resolved because <spoiler alert> Superman and Batman both had mothers named Martha. Seriously. Yet somehow the film still ended up #8 at the domestic box office. Apparently being the first big superhero movie of the summer was genius positioning, because it did way better than some much better films that came out later in the year.
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Russia will engage in significant provocation this year in an effort to rekindle a Cold War atmosphere.
Hacking servers and attempting to influence the Presidential election isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I made the prediction, but it most definitely counts.
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Twitter will finish 2016 at least 25% lower than its current $20 price.
$16.44 on January 3. The 52 week low was $13.73, and it did drop more than fifteen percent in a year in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by about fifteen percent, but feel free to Tweet about how I got this one wrong.
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Nest hasn’t come out with a new product in a while, so I expect this year will see a new security product.
Nest is quickly rising up my list of most disappointing tech companies. They could have owned the smart home market, yet more than five years after they released a pioneering thermostat their most innovative product is… the same thermostat they released in 2011.
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The Browns will have another absolutely, indisputably, undeniably horrendous year in 2016, winning only between three and five games.
I got the “horrendous” part right, but somehow ended up being too optimistic when I predicted they would win three games. Ouch. At least the awful season means that on draft day they should either be able to pick a beast lineman and then spend 2017 watching him demolish quarterbacks, or else they can trade the top pick for a king’s ransom in another Moneyball masterpiece.
Final score: 4 out of 15 (27%). I was convinced that the 2016 predictions were too obvious, and yet somehow I still misfired on eleven of them. As of this writing I’ve already started on the predictions for 2017, and as wrong as I was about Trump in 2016, it looks like 2017 will see me doubling-down on underestimating the orange one.
Maybe next year……