Israeli Mentalist Correctly Predicts (Most of) the Election Results
by Zach Pontz
The U.S. might have Nate Silver, the wunderkind New York Times blogger who seems to be able to predict everything up to and including what your mom cooked for dinner using statistics and other advanced mathematics too difficult to explain, but Israel has Lior Suchard, a mentalist who simply predicts results by—well, who knows?
Israel’s Channel 2 reported that 2 weeks before the Israeli elections Suchard placed his predictions on a piece of paper, placed it in an envelope and then for good measure locked it in a vault. Thursday Suchard returned for the piece of paper–and his predictions were nearly spot on. He predicted 31 seats for Likud-Beiteinu (received 31), 18-19 for Yesh Atid (received 19), 15 for Labor (received 15), Jewish Home with 11 (received 12), Shas with 11 (received 11) and so on down the line.
And lest you be concerned that Suchard was able to manipulate the paper, it was reported that he kept a safe distance when it was retrieved from the safe.