Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design has been exploring a different approach to making predictions called crowd forecasting. It uses the wisdom of the crowd to make predictions about the future. This chart will be updated every day until election day - check in to see what the crowd thinks will happen!

When large groups of people make forecasts within well-defined criteria and with a clear, measurable outcome, taking an average of their estimates can be surprisingly accurate. For example, in a question about the outcome of the recent Brexit negotiations, the crowd correctly predicted that the UK would seek a further extension from the EU beyond 31 October.

Throughout 2019, Nesta has been challenging the public to make their own predictions about the likelihood of events related to Brexit and technology trends. Forecasters are invited to give their estimates on a wide variety of subjects, from the likelihood of a crewed space mission, to when McDonalds will launch its first vegan burger...and perhaps the least certain of all, what are the likely consequences of Brexit?

In the build-up to the general election we have been asking the crowd to predict the results - will the Conservative Party get a majority, will Labour get a majority, will some other party win, or will it be another hung Parliament?

Used like this, crowd forecasting on political results can be a fantastic method to complement more traditional tools, like polling, or analysing political betting markets. Listen to Aleksandra Berditchevskaia, Senior Researcher on Collective Intelligence, talk about the crowd forecasting political events on Nesta’s podcast Future Curious.