Announcing the Legislata Forecasting Tournament
This past fall, we ran a forecasting tournament for elections in Massachusetts. You can read more about it here or about forecasting tournaments in general.
It has three purposes.
Give people a way to test their predictive skills.
Generate some insights into Massachusetts politics.
Test the waters to see if we should roll out a forecasting tournament within out app.
It went well on all three counts (you can read about how accurate they were here) and we decided to create a forecasting tournament within the app for 2023. It’s free to join and you can request to join here. We’ll be awarding $1,300 over the course of the year to the most accurate forecasters.
What’s in the forecasting tournament
To participate in the tournament, you can sign up for a free Legislata account and request to join our Forecasting Tournament space using our invite link or by going to the Public Offices tab to the side of your screen.
We have a series of questions about what is going to happen in the political world. They’ll resolve throughout the year and new ones will be added. For example, “Will Joe Biden’s approval rating be higher on February 1 than January 1” will end on January 31 and we’ll add another one for his approval rating on March 1.
Each question will ask you to assign a probability from 0-100 for the different outcomes. This is the crucial element of forecasting tournaments. We’re not asking you to make a prediction about what will happen, like who will be the 2024 Republican presidential candidate. We’re asking what the probability is that Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, or someone else is the candidate. You won’t tell us “DeSantis will win,” but rather, “DeSantis has a 50% chance of winning, while Trump has 25% and the rest of the field a collective 25%.”
This has a number of advantages to traditional punditry:
It gets deeper into a question. You can show your assessment of the relative chances of events and change them over time, rather than speculating on the outcome.
It rewards the consistently accurate. You’re not looking to get lucky on a long-shot, but to be the closest to reality over a large number of questions.
Averaging all forecasts generates real insights. Academic research has shown that averaging everyone’s answers produces forecasts more accurate than an individual’s, and encourages people to check these predictions to see what’s happening.
You can make as many forecasts as you like, and you’ll be scored on how accurate your most recent forecast was every day that the question is open. We encourage you to make as many forecasts as you’d like, since tracking events as they shift is a proven way to be more accurate than others.
To encourage people to participate and try to be accurate, we’ll be offering $200 to the most accurate forecasters each quarter and $500 for the most accurate for the whole year.
What we’ll be forecasting
We’re starting off with the following questions. More will be added throughout the year.
Who will win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination?
When will Joe Biden announce his re-election campaign?
Will Kevin McCarthy be Speaker of the House of Representatives on March 31?
Will Kamala Harris be announced as Joe Biden's running mate for 2024?
How many bills will be filed in the Massachusetts State House by March 31, 2023?
Will Republicans pick up seats on New York City Council in the 2023 elections?
Will Vladimir Putin be President of Russia on December 31, 2023?
Will George Santos serve his entire term in Congress?
Will Twitter file for bankruptcy protection or shut down before March 31, 2023?
Will Joe Biden's approval rating on Feb 1 be higher than his approval rating on Jan 1?
Will the US unemployment rate for Feb 2023 be higher than 3.6%?
Will Donald Trump return to Twitter and tweet before March 31?
Will Khamenei cease to be Supreme Leader of Iran by Dec 31, 2023?
Will the Supreme Court side with the plaintiffs in Moore v Harper?
Want to create your own forecasting tournament?
There are other forecasting platforms out there, so what makes Legislata different?
Like other sites, we provide questions to predict. But we also let you create your own forecasts and incorporate them into your existing informational feeds on the platform. You can make your own questions, invite people to participate, and see who is the most accurate over time. This feature is still in development, so contact us at chris@legislata.com to discuss joining the waiting list for it.
You can also use this feature to monitor events quantitatively and share your insights with others. You can read more about that here.