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The World Ahead | The World Ahead 2024, in 2025

How did our predictions stack up in 2024?

It was a year that was full of surprises

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Illustration: Ricardo Tomas

By Tom Standage, Editor, The World Ahead 2025

What a year. One American presidential candidate bowed out a few months before the election; another was almost assassinated, twice. Ukraine launched a counter-invasion into Russian territory. Iran’s president died in a helicopter crash. We anticipated none of these extraordinary events. And we expected America’s election to be a coin-toss—and failed to foresee the scale of Donald Trump’s decisive victory.

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This article appeared in the International section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2025 under the headline “How we did in 2024”

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