Hope springs eternal.
Photographer: Gary Hershorn/Corbis News via Getty Images
The 10% World Offers a Sliver of Hope for 2024
Unlike in 2016, when Trump and Brexit defied pundit predictions, the unthinkable options this time around are the good ones.
Eight years ago, in January 2016, one of us published a piece proclaiming that we lived in a “20% world.” Bookmakers were offering punters a 1-in-5 chance of Donald Trump winning the US presidency that November. There were similar odds on three other “unthinkables”: Britain voting to leave the European Union; the extreme left-winger Jeremy Corbyn being elected Britain’s prime minister; and Marine Le Pen ascending to the French presidency.
The piece warned that, thanks to the enormous resentment among voters across the West, the chance of at least one of these unthinkables taking place was dangerously high.