I did not make any predictions for 2012, but I will keep score for the 2011 predictions. It’s been a busy year so far with both parenting and my professional life consuming a huge chunk of time and reading the crystal ball has become a more difficult task as of late.
I will list the predictions (made on January 4, 2011), and give the actual result:
Politics (7/11 correct)
1. (e) Stephen Harper will be Prime Minister on December 31, 2011.
Correct. With a majority government!
2. (m) Canadians will vote in a general federal election between July 1 to December 31, 2011.
Wrong. The election was on May 2, 2011. I did not think Michael Ignatieff would be silly enough to pull the plug on the budget with the Liberal party still clearly in disarray. Their correct strategy would have been to wait, and wait, and wait, and hope and pray that the Conservatives would do something stupid. They didn’t.
3. (e) The Green Party of Canada will not win a seat in an election.
Wrong! Elizabeth May won with 46% of the vote.
4. (e) No British Columbia general election in 2011.
Correct, although I bet Christy Clark wished she did so.
5. (m) In Ontario’s 2011 general election, a minority government will be voted in.
Correct, albeit by one seat.
6. (e) No “meaningful” Canada senate reform will take place – i.e. no elected senate, no term limits, no redistribution of seats.
Correct.
7. (m) Rampant end-of-year media speculation that Barack Obama will not run for a second term as president. Prediction is also successful if he announces he will not run again.
Incorrect. Obama will likely get the Democratic nomination, and there was no serious or even semi-credible contender – Hillary Clinton is basically hanging up the boxing gloves.
8. (m) California Governor Jerry Brown will be credited in trying to turn around California’s fiscal situation (compared to Schwartzeneggar, who was viewed as unable to do anything about it).
Wrong.
9. (m) The next BC NDP Opposition Leader will be Adrian Dix.
Correct, although it should be pointed out that my prediction closer to the election time was Mike Farnworth, which obviously turned out to be wrong.
10. (e) All recall campaigns will fail in BC.
Correct.
11. (h) The HST or equivalent remains at year-end in BC. To “test” this prediction, if I purchase a coffee at Tim Hortons at year-end, it will have a 12% sales tax applied to it.
Correct, the HST is slated for destruction on March 31, 2013.
Geopolitical (1/4 correct)
1. (m) Julian Assange, creator of Wikileaks, will not be incarcerated at December 31, 2011.
Correct.
2. (m) A security incident at a North American airport will result in more stringent measures to be adopted world-wide. People complain, but still put up with the increasingly stringent security measures.
Wrong. Did not happen.
3. (h) There will be a significant power failure on the transmission grid in North America that will cause an event of a near-equivalent scale of the 2003 Northeast Blackout.
Wrong, did not happen.
4. (m) There will be no “live” or otherwise clear video recording of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Audio does not count, nor grainy internet images.
Technically correct, but I will judge this prediction as absolutely wrong since Osama got killed on the day of the Canadian federal election.
Financial (1/3 correct)
1. (m) Regular unleaded gas prices will exceed the $1.50/litre that was seen in the Lower Mainland in 2008, creating headlines clearly focused on the price of gasoline, especially around the July 1 carbon tax increase in BC.
Wrong. They came close – around $1.30/litre. You’ll see prices go up to $1.50 in 2012.
2. (m) The Greater Vancouver Real Estate market, as measured by REBGV, will end the year lower for a condominium than at the beginning of the year.
Wrong. A condominium in the GVRE on December 2010 was $360,300, while on December 2011 was $369,900.
3. (m) Food prices, as measured by Statistics Canada (example here), will be at least 3% higher in 2011 than 2010 although it will “feel” more than this.
Correct. Food index on December 2010 was 123.9, while in December 2011 it was 129.3, resulting in a 4.4% increase.
Miscellaneous (6/9 correct, 1 not judged)
1. (e) The Chevrolet Volt will be commercially “insignificant”.
Correct. The key line is “Cumulative sales of the Volt in the U.S. and Canada reached 8,272 units through December 2011″, according to the always-correct Wikipedia.
2. (m) The Nissan Leaf will sell more in 2011 than the Chevrolet Volt.
Correct, but barely. The key Wikipedia line is “Since December 2010 more than 22,000 units have been sold worldwide through February 2012. The top selling markets are the United States, with 10,847 units sold through February 2012, and Japan with more than 8,000 Leafs sold by mid November 2011.” I’ll call this a narrow victory.
3. (m) The Higgs Boson will not be discovered in 2011 even with the Large Hadron Collider being fully operational.
Correct. They’ll find out in 2012 whether it does or does not exist.
4. (h) Vancouver Canucks will win the Stanley Cup. What the heck, have to predict this eventually…
WRONG! They were off by ONE GAME.
5. (m) Facebook will file S-1 and go public.
Wrong. Off by one month and a day – their S-1 went out on February 1, 2012.
6. (h) Twitter will be sold.
Wrong.
7. (m) Mac will not get above 10% penetration in terms of OS usage on the W3Stats index.
Correct. December 2011 shows 8.5%.
8. (m) At least one of Wind Mobile, Mobilicity or Public Mobile will either “sell out” their business or otherwise go out of business.
Correct. Wind Mobile’s parent sold to some Russian telecom company, VimpelCom.
9. (m) The iPad will face a credible competitor. To give an idea of “credible”, it is what Blackberry or Android devices are to the iPhone. It is NOT what Microsoft Zune is to the iPod!
This one is tough to judge. Amazon has a kindle which is designed to compete, Asus has one, Samsung has one… are they credible? I’m not going to judge this one.
10. (e) “Social Networking“, “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” will not reach 2010′s peak value on Google Trends.
Correct, correct, correct!
All in all, not a bad effort in 2011.