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 26^th (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