Qualifying political figures are the President, VP, any Cabinet secretary, any member of Congress, any Supreme Court Justice, or any state governor. Any injury, no matter how slight, counts as a “wound” for this question, as long as the assassin was in our judgment intending to kill their victim.
This is question #24 in the Astral Codex Ten 2023 Prediction Contest. The contest rules and full list of questions are available here. Market will resolve according to Scott Alexander’s judgment, as given through future posts on Astral Codex Ten.
1,000
3.00Assassination attempts that actually wound the target are not very common, and the number targeted at anyone other than the President looks very small when I do preliminary research here. ‘No matter how slight’ counts as wounded here, it still seems hard for the base rate to be as high as 17% for 10.5 months, and if anything tensions are deflating. Killing Biden to put Harris in charge seems like not a great opportunity in anyone’s eyes. I bought M100 of NO. Also I am disappointed in Metaculus for being too scared to allow this market.
@Duncan I think anyone who has currently or previously held any of the positions listed in the description.
@BTE From the comments of the ACX post:
Your definition of "major US political figure" in #24 would exclude Donald Trump (or Mike Pence). Did you mean to do that?
Dec 16, 2022Author
No but it's not worth changing the question around for this now.