If history teaches us anything, it’s that political forecasters almost always get it wrong. Just look at Venezuela, writes Paul Ormerod

Following the dramatic events in Venezuela, regime change is a topical theme.

But until a few days, at most, before the American intervention, no one expected President Maduro to be ousted. The media was not full of stories from so-called experts predicting his imminent end.

He had rigged an election and inherited a formidable internal security service to suppress internal dissent. In any case, one third of the population of Venezuela, who might have formed an opposition, had already fled the country.

The failure to predict major political changes appears to be endemic.

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A history of bad forecasting

Perhaps the most dramatic event since the Second World War was the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European empire at the end of the 1980s. Yet........

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