Why I stopped making election forecasts

IN 2016, I was one of the fools who thought people wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. As I explained to readers before the Republican primaries: “The electorate generally just wants a leader who appears sane, which is why Republicans almost certainly won’t nominate Trump.”

I was taking my lead from so-called experts. “If you want to know the future,” I wrote in May that year, “the best forecasters are betting markets... The Oddschecker website, which compares odds offered by different bookmakers, indicates a chance of just over one in four that Brits will opt for Brexit. The chances of Trump becoming American president or Marine Le Pen (becoming) French president are judged a tad smaller.”

This time, I won’t be making election forecasts.