Zack Stanton is digital editor of Politico Magazine. Derek Robertson is a news assistant for POLITICO Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @afternoondelete.

If you guess at the outcome of anything, you’re bound to be wrong a lot.

There are certain things that it’s fairly easy to predict far in advance, because they happen with routine regularity: The sun will rise in the morning, Christmas will be held on December 25, the Detroit Lions will not win the Super Bowl.


But there’s a difference between those certainties and trying to claim any real confidence about events that are by and large impossible to know in advance: what cultural issues will be salient political topics next year, what non-Mueller subject will President Donald Trump fulminate about on Twitter tomorrow.

And yet, in an age of social media, everybody is now a pundit—which is not a bad thing, but often takes the shape of overconfident prognostications that are more often wishes about what we hope happens rather than thoughtful analyses of what will.

As 2018 draws to a close and we again turn our thoughts to the new year, POLITICO Magazine brings you its fifth annual “worst predictions” list, reflecting on the gulf between what actually happened this year and what some people were so sure would.

20. In 2018, Trump will resign as president, Netanyahu will resign as Israel’s prime minister and Trump will not move the U.S. Embassy in Israel.

Made by: David Rothkopf

On January 1, David Rothkopf, a Carnegie Endowment scholar and foreign policy expert, predicted that despite Trump’s promises to the contrary, the U.S. would not move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The new embassy opened on May 14. The bolder prediction was that both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would resign by year’s end. Though there are still a few days left in which that could happen, neither man seems likely to leave office by January 1.

19. Joe Crowley will be the next speaker of the House.

Made by: Matt Fuller

At the time HuffPost congressional reporter Matt Fuller said this, it wasn’t a ridiculous idea. Joe Crowley was the No. 4 House Democrat, decades younger than his superiors, and well-liked in the caucus. He could’ve threatened Nancy Pelosi in a new House majority. Then came a stunning political upset: Crowley lost his primary to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old democratic socialist and first-time candidate. Now, Pelosi will be speaker, and Crowley won’t even be in office.

18. Impeachment proceedings will begin against Trump.

Made by: Edward Luce, Financial Times

Not only have impeachment proceedings not started—which should not be a surprise, considering Republicans hold the House and Senate until January—incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi has rejected such calls as premature and a distraction from Democrats’ policy agenda.

17. John Kelly will root out and “publicly humiliate” the author of the anonymous New York Times op-ed within days of its release.

Made by: Sebastian Gorka

In early September, after the Times published an op-ed by an anonymous member of the Trump administration, former administration official Sebastian Gorka predicted that chief of staff John Kelly would “root out this seditious individual and he or she will be very publicly humiliated and fired,” and that this would “happen in the next few days.” As of late December, the author’s identity remains a secret, and Kelly is headed out as chief of staff.

16. “Trump will be denied another Supreme Court nomination.”

Made by: Andrew Klausner, Forbes

“Short of an unexpected death, Trump will be denied another Supreme Court nomination next year,” Klausner wrote in Forbes. Yet despite the fact no sitting justices died this year, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation on June 27, leading to one of the major news stories of 2018: The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

15. Mueller will end his probe before the midterm elections and declare Trump “innocent.”

Made by: Bill Mitchell

“I predict Mueller himself will end the #Russiagate Probe about a month to 2 weeks before the midterms […] Trump will be declared innocent,” tweeted Mitchell, a conservative who has become a Twitter celebrity over the past few years on account of his unwavering support for Trump. At the end of the year, special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election interference is ongoing, a number of people in Trump’s immediate orbit are under investigation, several have pleaded guilty, and Trump has not been declared innocent.

14. The Mueller investigation will “be put to rest” and “no significant charges will be leveled against anyone.”

Made by: Glenn Beck

Mueller’s investigation has charged 33 people with more than 100 criminal counts. Among the significant individuals who have faced charges since Beck wrote this in January: former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was found guilty on eight counts, including tax fraud and bank fraud; Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress; and George Papadopoulos, a former Trump foreign policy adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

13. Mueller’s investigation will end by September.

Made by: Rudy Giuliani

It’s still ongoing, more indictments are expected, and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s plea deal is exposing new information about Trump’s business dealings in Russia.

12. The New York Times would be proven wrong in reporting that Trump tried to fire Mueller.

Made by: Sean Hannity

It’s rare for a cable-news host to have to walk back a prediction he made within minutes, but that’s exactly what happened to Fox News personality Sean Hannity on January 25. Earlier that day, the New York Times reported that Trump had attempted to fire Robert Mueller. Hannity dismissed it: “How many times [have] the New York Times and others gotten it wrong?” Minutes later, returning from commercial break, Hannity announced that Fox News had since confirmed the Times’ reporting. “Yeah, maybe he wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict,” Hannity said, his voice raised defensively. “Does he not have the right to raise those questions? You know, we’ll deal with this tomorrow night.”

11. “Trump will not pardon anyone, unless it’s a family member.”

Made by: Steve Deace

Or unless it’s Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former aide to Dick Cheney convicted for lying under oath about the “Plamegate” leaks; Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing provocateur convicted in 2014 of making illegal campaign contributions; deceased boxing legend Jack Johnson, who was the target of a racist prosecution in 1913; and Dwight and Steven Hammond, whose standoff with the federal government over ranching rights culminated in the Bundy family’s 40-day armed occupation of federal lands.

10. Trump will “ramp up construction” of the wall and reauthorize DACA.

Made by: Siraj Hashmi, Washington Examiner

So far, new border construction projects have been simply “fences that replace older fences,” reports the Arizona Republic. And those efforts cover just slightly more than 40 miles on a border that is 2,000 miles long. As for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that delays deportation for undocumented immigrants who came to America as children, the Trump administration let it expire in March, though its future remains a topic of litigation.

9. Republicans lose the House and Senate, leading to the impeachment of … President Paul Ryan.

Made by: Scott Dworkin

Dworkin, a Democratic pundit who has earned a Twitter following for his anti-Trump broadsides, predicted in October 2017 that Vice President Mike Pence and Trump would leave office by the end of that year, paving the way for Speaker Paul Ryan to become president. Then, in 2018, Republicans would lose the House (they did) and Senate (they didn’t), at which point, President Ryan would be impeached (categorically cannot happen).

8. A “RED WAVE!” would crash over the 2018 elections.

Made by: Donald Trump

The Republicans lost 40 seats in the House and ceded control of the chamber to Democrats, had a net gain of two seats in the Senate (while losing seats in Arizona and Nevada) and saw seven GOP-held gubernatorial seats flip to Democrats (Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin). There was a red wave only inasmuch as Republicans suffered a bloodbath.



7. “The great political surprise of 2018 will be the size of the Republican victory.”

Made by: Newt Gingrich, Fox News

See above.

6. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will kill Brett Kavanaugh’s court nomination.

Made by: Ben Shapiro

Sen. Murkowski ended up opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but Sen. Collins’ support proved decisive: He was confirmed, 50-48.

5. Trump will end the year with a 25 percent approval rating.

Made by: Frida Ghitis, CNN

Barring some major calamity before January (which, hey, could happen), this is extremely unlikely. FiveThirtyEight’s aggregator shows that most reputable polls give Trump an approval rating of around 42 percent and a disapproval rating of roughly 52 percent.

4. Dianne Feinstein will be vulnerable to a challenge from her left.

Made by: Sean McElwee and Jon Green

In a January 2018 article for Vice, McElwee and Green, liberal activists who co-founded Data for Progress, posited a theory that “for any given seat, the Democratic electorate will want to nominate the most progressive candidate who can regularly win it.” They then compared the frequency with which different Democratic senators vote with Trump with the percentage for the average Democratic Congressperson from that same state. Among the Dem incumbents they rated poorly: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. This year, she faced a primary challenge from insurgent liberal state Sen. Kevin de León, and because of California’s “jungle primary” election system, the two faced off in the general election. Not only did Feinstein trounce de León, but exit polls showed that 63 percent of Democrats voted for Feinstein, seemingly disproving McElwee and Green’s entire theory (while 59 percent of Republicans voted for de León, despite the fact he was the more liberal candidate).

3. More black Americans will be “on the Trump Train” at the end of 2018.

Made by: Diamond & Silk

Diamond & Silk, two social-media personalities who spun their support for Trump into regular guest spots on Fox News, visited “Fox & Friends” on New Year’s Eve last year to share their predictions for the year ahead. Among them: that support for Trump among African-Americans would increase this year. There’s no real evidence this has happened. Gallup pegged his job approval among black Americans at 11 percent in January and at 10 percent in November. Polling firm Civiqs had him with a 7 percent approval in January and a 6 percent approval in mid-December.

2. “Our economic news is only going to get brighter in 2018.”

Made by: Laura Ingraham, Fox News

At the very beginning of the year, Laura Ingraham predicted that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts would keep the country's economic expansion rolling all the way through 2018. “It’s only two days in, and it truly already feels like a happy New Year,” Ingraham effused on her nightly Fox News program. By December, a stock market crash wiped out the entirety of the year’s gains, amid diminished expectations for growth and widespread anxiety over the effects of the president’s trade wars.

1. Amazon will place HQ2 in Boston.

Made by: Aiera

Our first prediction by a machine: The artificial intelligence platform Aiera drew upon a wide pool of data to predict that Amazon would choose Boston as the location for its second headquarters. Chicago was No. 2, and Atlanta was No. 3. The eventual victors, New York and Northern Virginia, were No. 4 and unranked, respectively; nearby Washington, D.C. was No. 7.