You Never Know Until You Know

With only a few days left to the state election in Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD, a far-right party, is leading by a large margin in the polls. Percentage points jump from one party to another here and there, but if the last few months are any indication, they could collect over 40% of the votes, potentially even enough to govern the state on their own without needing to form a coalition. But despite its brevity, it is a big word: if.

In 2008, Nate Silver’s blog FiveThirtyEight got a lot of traction. He came up with a new way of aggregating polling data and correctly predicted Obama’s win of the US presidency. In 2012, he and his team even correctly guessed the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, when Obama secured his second term in office.

In 2016, however, they projected that Donald Trump only had a 2% chance of securing the candidacy for the presidency. Yet, he did. They later favored Hillary Clinton with a 71% chance of winning the presidency. Yet, she didn’t. In the end, the blog was sold and resold several times before shutting down altogether in 2025.

Elections. Soccer games. The weather.

A first date. Your next career move. That spontaneous visit to a restaurant.

Statistics and analyses are interesting—yet, even when they get the result right, they don’t tell the full story. You never know until you know. Don’t throw in the towel, odds be damned.