World’s ‘top economist’ makes huge US election prediction

An economist considered to be the most accurate in the world has revealed if he foresees Kamala Harris or Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.

Christophe Barraud, who is chief economist and strategist at Market Securities Monaco, shared his forecast as Vice President Harris and ex-President Trump remain neck-and-neck with eight days until Election Day.

‘Looking at different metrics such as betting markets, polls, election modelers’ forecasts, financial markets, as of now, the most probable outcomes are: (1) #Trump victory (2) #GOP clean sweep,’ he wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday morning.

Barraud, 38, included screengrabs of charts from the election betting platform Polymarket and the regulated exchange and prediction market Kalshi.

Polymarket showed 48% for Republicans taking the White House, Senate and House, while Kalshi had 44% for a GOP sweep.

Barraud was named the top forecaster of the US economy in 11 of the last dozen years by Bloomberg. He also earned the top spot in quarterly standings for the third quarter of 2024.

The French economist said the most likely outcome of the November election is that Trump will win the presidency and Republicans will take the Senate. However, he sees the House as possibly being a toss-up.

His forecasts are based on collecting economic, financial and satellite data, finding key signals from backtests, then using more models to explore projections and risks. For the US election, Barraud is looking to several poll-betting markets with the most users.

‘His secret sauce isn’t in his personal opinion or high-level perspective,’ reported Business Insider on Saturday.

‘When asked “why” something is expected to shift, he laughs and says it’s the model’s output.’

Barraud is at least the second expert regarded to be the best in his field to predict a Trump victory.

On Wednesday, top polling guru and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver wrote in a guest essay in The New York Times: ‘My gut says Donald Trump.’

Silver prefaced his piece by stressing that his prediction model has essentially shown the race at 50-50 for Harris and Trump, and that it could easily tip either way.

‘I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut – including mine,’ he wrote.

Meanwhile, historian Allan Lichtman, who has been dubbed the ‘Nostradamus’ of US presidential elections for correctly predicting nine of the last 10, in late September unveiled his pick to be Harris.

Unlike Barraud and Silver who watch changes in their models, Lichtman based his forecast on his 13 keys to the White House which are determined by true-false answers instead of polls and pundits.

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