“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,” as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous line goes.
He knew that no plan survives its first meeting with reality, and he still never stopped planning.
Three elections in three days, and three different tests of what forecasts can—and cannot—tell us.
In Serbia, prediction markets gave the ruling list about a 72% chance of winning on the eve of the vote. The Student List won decisively, and Vučić conceded within hours.
In Brazil, a final poll had Bolsonaro slightly ahead. Lula won the runoff with 51.79% of the valid vote, while Flávio Bolsonaro rejected the result.
In Israel, pre-election polling favoured Eisenkot’s bloc. Exit polls then showed a close contest, with neither side reaching the 61 seats needed for a majority. The count is still underway.
Three contests, three different stories about the gap between expectation and outcome.
Same week, same lesson: the chart is not the sea.
Picture a navigator who trusts the chart over the lookout. The chart is tidy, confident and drawn from yesterday’s water. The lookout sees what is actually there, but speaks with less certainty, so he gets ignored. Polls, models and markets are charts. Useful, never final.
And the sea doesn’t only misbehave at the ballot box. The Strait of Hormuz shows the same problem in slow motion. Commercial traffic has fallen to a fraction of its normal level, with just four recorded transits on 18 October against a typical 85 a day. Brent crude was around $115 a barrel on 28 October. The precise picture matters: vessel movements, oil flows and regional production are different measures, and confusing them can lead to fragile decisions.
Belgrade, Brasília, Jerusalem and the Gulf: different situations, one habit of steering by the chart.
A few questions to take with you:
- Which chart is your organisation steering by today, and when did anyone last check it against the water?
- If the most likely scenario isn’t the one that arrives, who calls it, and how fast?
- And when the result lands badly, who concedes first?
Join us in the Global Risk Forum this week and tell us where your chart and your sea disagree.
- Global Risk Forum 473
- Thursday, 29th October at 16:00 GMT
- REGISTRATION >>
- Global Risk Forum 474
- Friday, 30th October at 09:00 GMT
- REGISTRATION >>
