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Matthaeus Loder – The Card Layer – Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
2025’s competition proved to be a very tough year to predict, or perhaps a tough set of questions to predict against. But look on the bright side, everybody scored some points.
And we do have a clear winner!
Congratulations to @Driver for beating the cream of PB punditry with a top score of 170 points, 40 points clear of the nearest challenger.
The top entries were:
A few other thoughts from me:
- Labour and Conservative poll woes caught most entrants out and no one got those parties’ lowest poll scores; the Lib Dems polling proved easiest to predict overall.
- Other questions where we were mostly awry were the US and EU growth numbers, and the end of year USD/RUB exchange rate, which held up much better than most predicted.
- The PB average answer for each question (rounded) would have finished only 26th (out of 57) on 60 points.
- I will be pleading the Fifth to the question ‘who came last?’.
The official PB answers are below and there’s also a link to the scoring spreadsheet for the masochists among you who would like to check your own scores.
| Question | Answers and scoring |
| 1. Highest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform. | Correct answers: Lab 30%; Con 26%; LD 17%; Ref 35% – 20 pts for each correct party; within 2% = 10pts. |
| 2. Lowest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform. | Correct answers: Lab 14%, Con 14%, LD 10%, Ref 21% – 20 pts for each correct party; within 2% = 10pts. |
| 3. Number of Reform MPs on 31/12/2025. | Correct answer: 5 (Farage, Tice, Anderson, Pochin, Kruger) = 20pts; any other answer = 0 pts |
| 4. Number of Tory MP defectors to Reform in 2025. | Correct answer: 1 (Kruger) = 20pts; any other answer = 0 pts |
| 5. Number of Westminster by-elections held in 2025. | Correct answer: 1 (Runcorn and Helsby) = 20pts; any other answer = 0 pts |
| 6. Number of ministers to leave the Westminster cabinet during 2025. | Correct answer: 4 (Rayner, Powell, Murray, Reeves) = 20pts; any other answer = 0 pts |
| 7. Number of seats won by the AfD in the May 2025 German Federal Election. | Correct answer: 152 seats = 20pts; within 10 seats (142 to 162) = 10 pts |
| 8. UK CPI figure for November 2025. | Correct answer: 3.2% =20pts; within 0.2% (3.0% to 2.4%) = 10 pts |
| 9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2025. | Correct answer: £132.3bn To within £1bn (£131.3bn – £133.3bn) = 20pts; within 5% = 10 pts |
| 10. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2025. | Correct answer: 1.1% = 20pts; ±0.1% = 10pts |
| 11. US growth annualised rate in Q3 2025. | Correct answer: 4.3% =20pts; ±0.1% = 10 pts |
| 12. EU growth Q3 2024 to Q3 2025 (2024 = 1.0%). | Correct answer: 1.6% = 20pts; ±0.1% = 10 pts |
| 13. USD-Ruble exchange rate at London FOREX close on 31/12/2025. | Correct answer: 79.1 RUB/USD Correct or closest answer 20pts; within 10% = 10 pts |
| 14. The result of the 2025-2026 Ashes series. | Correct answer: 4-1 to Australia = 20pts; any other answer = 0 pts |
Link to the scoring spreadsheet if you want to see how you fared:
PB Prediction Competition 2025 – shared
Any disputes: speak to my lawyer!
There will be a 2026 predictions competition which we launched later on this month.
Ben Pointer
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