VidurKapur

Confirming my forecast. I'm not willing to go lower than 2% at the moment because six months would take us to late March, which is when many Cabinet appointments in a new Administration will be settling into their jobs (assuming they are confirmed by the Senate) and when we could see some de-escalation in the Middle East. For example, Tony Blinken was confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of State on January 26, 2021. 

But I still think it's very unlikely because the war continues in Gaza and there is the potential for escalation in Lebanon.

Slightly adjusting my forecast downward because there has still been no generalized AI leap forward since (arguably) 2023 that might result in renewed hype for Nvidia.

Confirming my forecast. The Ukrainian incursion into Russia hasn't ended, but it has arguably petered out, reducing any internal threat to Putin's position.

The vice-chair of the UN-recognized government in Yemen has said that it is time to accept that the Houthis are not interested in a power-sharing deal in the country offered to them by Saudi Arabia and the UN. He also suggested that the West needs to be more strategic in how it deals with the Houthis (but certainly did not have anything nice to say about them). Reducing my probability estimate by a percentage point as a result of this intervention.

Officials in the Biden Administration continue to believe that a deal is unlikely. Given that they're probably falling prey to optimism bias, we should conclude that a deal is very unlikely. Reducing my probability estimate that there will be a deal by a further two percentage points. The Biden Administration may also be less interested in negotiating a deal after November 5 if Trump wins (and major foreign policy decisions tend not to happen during the transition period), so we could have less than one and a half months for this to be negotiated.

Upwardly updating my estimate that it will be more than or equal to 28% on the strong July data for the Americas region.

Confirming my forecast. Saudi Arabia has said that it will not recognize Israel until it agrees to establish a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. If Saudi Arabia won't move, I highly doubt any of the others will. Israel has escalated its conflict with Hezbollah and a ceasefire deal with Hamas appears out of reach this year. Against this backdrop, it would be a PR nightmare for any of these countries to recognize Israel's statehood.

Confirming my forecast again as not enough time has passed to move my estimate down by a percentage point and there are no major updates.

This remains exceedingly unlikely. Even if Russia does achieve what it would consider to be success in Ukraine, it doesn't necessarily mean that it would go for a NATO country next. As the alleged Russia-backed coup attempt in Armenia illustrates, Russia may well want to increase its control over its non-NATO neighbours.

Venezuela's opposition leader says that he was forced to accept Maduro as the winner of the election before being granted permission to seek asylum in Spain, which speaks to the power that Maduro and his officials still have over the bureaucracy. Increasing my probability estimate that Maduro will be President on 11 January 2025 by one percentage point.