What I got wrong in 2023
Senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich looks back at his 2023 predictions.
To err is human; to go back and relitigate everything you got wrong in the past year — well, that's just masochistic.
But every year, I try to write an article doing exactly that. When you analyze politics for a living, it's easy to just sweep your bad predictions under the rug, but we here at 538 believe in accountability: It's unrealistic to expect someone to get every prediction right, but it is fair to expect them to be transparent about the ones they get wrong. (Plus, let's be honest: It's really fun to reread someone's bad takes with the benefit of hindsight.)
Since much of 538's coverage in 2023 was dominated by next year's election, the verdict is still out on a lot of the predictions I made this year. But a lot still happened in 2023, and there were still plenty of opportunities for me to get egg on my face. So, without further ado: Here are the biggest things I got wrong in 2023.
I've got to start with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. If you're saying, "Who?" … well, that kind of proves my point. On June 7, Burgum announced he was joining the Republican primary field for president, and I wrote an article titled, "Why Doug Burgum Could Surprise In The 2024 Republican Primary."
You see, the anonymous boreal governor is also a billionaire, and he had used his personal fortune to win a primary no one thought he could win once before — when he first ran for governor in 2016. (Though, to be fair, I didn't predict he would win the presidential primary — just that he would have "a meaningful impact on the race.")
Obviously, that didn't happen. While Burgum did use his wealth to, essentially, pay people to donate to him so that he could qualify for the first couple primary debates, his old-fashioned, folksy demeanor failed to win over many voters: He peaked at 1 percent in 538's national polling average, and he dropped out on Dec. 4.
What did I learn from this failed prediction? Basically, not to overthink things. Thanks to his wealth, Burgum might have had a path to viability in the primary if you squinted really hard — but the more likely scenario was always that he would just be yet another also-ran in a year full of them.
And this was probably not the year to get creative with galaxy-brain takes of how various Republicans could win the primary. It may be obvious to close political observers that former President Donald Trump is a heavy favorite to win the nomination, but many everyday Americans aren't aware of that: According to a recent Data for Progress poll, 37 percent of likely voters don't think Trump is most likely to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024.
In a similar vein, over the summer, I was too generous to another GOP presidential contender whose campaign was on the ropes: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis's second-quarter fundraising report revealed key weaknesses, such as a high burn rate and an overreliance on large donors. But I chose to look on the sunny side for the governor of the Sunshine State, emphasizing his high total receipts and the largesse of his super PAC. But DeSantis's third-quarter fundraising report proved his doubters right — in part because he had tapped out so many big donors, his total receipts were only about half what he raised in the second quarter.
In this case, I was too slow to update my priors about DeSantis's strength as a candidate. I was still thinking about him as a force to be reckoned with, despite the fact that he had fallen more than 10 percentage points in national polls between March and July.
The presidential primary wasn't the only thing I covered in 2023, though. There were actual elections that took place this year too — and I didn't always interpret their results correctly. As early as February, when Virginia held a special election for Congress and Wisconsin held its primary for state Supreme Court, there were signs that Democrats were going to have a really good year. But I threw cold water on them at the time, noting that Wisconsin primary results haven't historically been predictive and that we needed a larger sample size of special elections to draw any firm conclusions.
While waiting for more data is always a good idea, if you counted state-legislative special elections, it was probably already clear by that point that Democrats were doing unusually well at the ballot box. And even after that trend continued through the spring and summer, I didn't correct the record and write a fresh article about it until September.
However, I may have overcompensated for that this November, when I used Democrats' strong track record in special elections to predict that the special election in Utah's 2nd Congressional District "could be closer than you think." Balancing the dark-red hue of the district (R+21, based on Trump's historical margins there) with Democrats' typical special-election overperformance (9 points), I speculated that Republican Celeste Maloy might win by only about 12 points. Instead, she won by 23.
My mistake here was assuming an overall trend would apply to an individual election. Democrats may have overperformed in special elections by 9 points on average, but that means there were some special elections where Democrats overperformed by huge margins and some special elections where Republicans actually overperformed.
Special elections are just that — special — and they can often buck national trends because of local factors. In this case, I forgot that Trump's performance probably isn't the best measure of how red Utah is: Utah is more institutionalist than populist, and Trump did significantly worse than past GOP presidential candidates in the state. In retrospect, it wasn't surprising that Maloy, as a more establishment-aligned Republican, ended up outperforming Trump.
2023 was also eventful outside the electoral sphere — especially in the halls of Congress. Congress went into the year facing two imposing financial deadlines: The U.S. was slated to hit the debt ceiling in early summer, and a government shutdown loomed in October if Congress could not agree on a spending plan. Even though the U.S has never defaulted on its debt, I thought there was a non-zero chance that we would actually hit the debt ceiling this time because I was skeptical that then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy could convince his fellow Republicans to pass a debt-ceiling increase — and if he compromised with Democrats, I thought he might lose his job as speaker.
But I have to give McCarthy credit: He struck a deal with President Joe Biden that ended up getting broad bipartisan support. Then, a few months later, I was convinced that Congress would let the federal government shut down, in part because that has happened several times in the past. But McCarthy again pulled a rabbit out of his hat and passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. (Of course, this time, the compromise did cost him his job as speaker, so maybe I deserve half-credit for that one.)
Finally, not all of my predictions this year were about politics. I embarrassed myself with some bad sports analysis, too! One of my hobbies every winter is to predict which players will be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and last January, I thought Scott Rolen, one of the best third basemen of all time, would fall agonizingly short of the 75 percent majority he needed. But when the results were announced on live TV, Rolen got 76 percent, and I let out an involuntary hoot of glee and surprise. It was a nice reminder that it's not always bad to be wrong.
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