Editor's note: We took a few days off for the holidays, so today's newsletter is  abbreviated. We'll see you back here with our regular newsletter tomorrow. 

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On January 1, the team from Vox’s Future Perfect set out to predict big moments for the year ahead – 24 for them, to be exact, covering politics, world affairs, culture, and more. 

Now, we don’t necessarily condone betting, but 364 days later, we can proudly report that, were they wagering types, they would have come out reasonably ahead. 

As they guessed, Trump won the election, and Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first woman president. Sometimes they were off the mark: Despite growing disapproval among Israelis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retained power. And the FDA did not approve therapeutic use of MDMA — a psychedelic popularly known as ecstasy — a move that surprised many other observers, too. (Note that each prediction came with a probability because some were more certain than others.)

Today, Bryan Walsh, Dylan Matthews, Marina Bolotnikova, Sigal Samuel, Kenny Torrella, and Izzie Ramirez — Team Future Perfect — are sharing a few of the surprising predictions that hit, and a few that didn’t. 

For the full list, be sure to check out their story here; and keep an eye out for the 2025 predictions, which we’ll publish on Vox later this week. 

—Lavanya Ramanathan, editor, Today Explained

There wasn’t much courage or confidence in this prediction, which I put at only 55 percent odds.

My basic approach was to try to use a political science model incorporating national polling, and I came up with a prediction of a narrow Trump victory. President Joe Biden was fairly unpopular, and Trump was narrowly leading him in polling. I wasn’t confident that advantage would persist — but it did.

I will say that if I had updated my prediction throughout the year, it would have changed a lot. I remember in June, before the disastrous Biden-Trump debate, telling friends I gave Trump a 75 percent chance to win; after the debate, I bumped it up to around 90 percent. When Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden and surged in polling compared to her predecessor, I reverted to something like 50-50 odds. The actual race and its contours were changing dramatically, and my sense of the race changed dramatically too.

Almost by coincidence, the ultimate election wound up being the narrow contest that polling would’ve predicted at the end of 2023. —Dylan Matthews

My reasoning here was that Republicans held a very small majority in the House going into the election, and Democrats seemed likely to pick up a number of seats in New York in particular due to redistricting. Sure enough, the party picked up three seats in New York, but lost others to pick up only one seat on net — not enough to flip the chamber.

In my defense, I was clear this might happen, writing, “There’s still an easy-to-imagine world where Republicans hold the House, especially if Trump wins the presidential race and if he pulls out a popular vote victory this time.” As it happens, that is the world we live in. But with 220 Republicans in the House and 218 needed to pass anything, there might not be much that Trump can do with this majority. —DM

Climate change is very obviously making its effects felt. This summer was the hottest on record globally. By November, scientists said this year is “virtually certain” to break 2023’s record. They also noted that 2024 marks the first year that Earth is more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than in the pre-industrial period.

Sadly, this prediction was a pretty solid bet: You can make it every year and you’ll get it right about 80 percent of the time. As my colleague Kelsey Piper has noted, “This is based on looking at the last 25 years of atmospheric temperature data: On average, in four out of five years, this prediction would be right.” —Sigal Samuel

I biffed this one pretty bad. For quarters one through three of 2024, Cybertruck sales totaled 28,250 in the US. Anecdotally, they seem to be everywhere in Washington, DC.

My rationale was that the extremely unusual design of the truck, complete with a metal rather than painted exterior and a truly massive windshield, would prove challenging to produce at scale. Moreover, Tesla tends to operate with extreme delays, which made me pessimistic that it would meet its timelines for the vehicle.

Ultimately, though, it’s a company with a lot of experience building EVs at scale, and the Cybertruck proved to be no exception. —DM

What did I write last year? “The Academy loves biopics, it loves period pieces, and for some reason, it weirdly loves modern films that feature black-and-white scenes.”

To no one’s surprise, Oppenheimer ran away with the show at the 96th Academy Awards, winning seven Oscars, including Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, Best Director for Christopher Nolan, and yes, Best Picture. Hot dog! —Bryan Walsh

You don’t have to be Bill James to know that two-way baseball super-duper megastar Shohei Ohtani had a pretty good year in 2024, his first with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He hit .310, good for fifth in the majors. He recorded 130 RBIs (second in the majors) and had an OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage, the gold standard hitting stat) of 1.036, also good for second in baseball.

He became the first player in major league history to hit more than 50 homers and steal more than 50 bases, becoming the only player in the 50/50 club. Oh, and he went on to win a championship, too.

The one thing Ohtani did not do is the one thing I predicted he would do: lead the major leagues in home runs in 2024. Ohtani mashed 54 taters; unfortunately, very big boy Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees took the crown this season with 58 home runs. —BW

I hate that this is true, but I was right on this one two times over. More than 40 million chickens and turkeys were killed in the poultry industry’s H5N1 bird flu outbreak. Since the outbreak began in early 2022, over 120 million have been culled.

Most of those are not killed by the avian flu itself; rather, any time there’s a single detection of the disease at a poultry facility, all of the birds are exterminated, often with gruesome methods. And there’s one disturbing development we couldn’t have predicted last year: H5N1 is now pervasive in another farm animal species, dairy cows, across the country. Next year, I think this disease will keep surprising us. —Marina Bolotnikova

Related story:

The 14 predictions that came true in 2024 — and the 10 that didn’t

The 24 forecasts we made in 2024, revisited.

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan. We'll see you tomorrow!

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