Reason magazine ran an article recently predicting that 2024 will see notable political violence in the US. (https://reason.com/2023/12/26/prediction-2024-will-see-deadly-political-violence-in-the-streets/) I think Matt is probably wrong about this, depending on how he defines "deadly." It inspired me to make this market (along with another one).
I've attempted to break up these buckets according to recent past years of political protest/riot deaths in the US. This turns out to be fairly hard to determine quickly, but so far as I can tell the US has averaged about 8 yearly. 2020 had 19 total, which seems like a good benchmark for "unusually bad."
So, some disclaimer and definition stuff: This is only counting deaths, here, and strictly from political events (whether politically motivated riots, "mostly peaceful" protests, or official campaigning events like a stump speech near the Capitol...). I obviously can't account for every permutation of "politics" so be warned only that I'll interpret it fairly broadly, but to be political the motivations have to have some sort of nexus with state action. I don't plan to bet on this market, but I do expect to bet on the connected market.
I will resolve this question a few days post-closing (to give myself time to count up the totals if there's dispute) or as soon as the tally unquestionably enters the top bucket.
Related questions
@Jamodon goddammit, I checked for that like four times and still messed it up. One sec while I see if I can fix it, or failing that, add something to the description.
@AndrewHartman I'm also annoyed that I didn't realize it'd append the OTHER option unavoidably, so I've changed the last numerical bucket to "51-100". First one is now 0-2.
To be clear, by 'political violence', do you mean something like 'violence with political aspirations and motivation', ie deaths for the sake of a political message, but not deaths that arise from political circumstance?
For instance, if a US state were to have their legislature institute a death penalty for some crimes, and then happens to execute 3 prisoners due to those new laws, that wouldn't count, despite being quite political deaths.
And if people die due to a lack of universal healthcare, presumably you don't count that, despite that being deaths that do relate to politcs too, and philosohpical debates whether it is 'violence' to impose market forces to healthcare.
Presumably you mean things like assassinations, or mass-shootings by people who publish some political manifesto, etc.
What about if there is a political protest/riot, and police end up killing a protestor/rioter?
Are police killings "political violence"? And does it depend on whether the police killed people legally or not?
And if the protestors fight back, do any dead police officers count as political violence, or is that just self-defence? Would it depend on who started the fight?
I think you'll need pretty good defining lines between these cases, since once mana is on the line people may engaged in motviated reasoning either way. Especially since your current description says "I'll interpret it fairly broadly", it invites broad inclusion of 'political violence'.
@MatthewLeong So, I would think a quick skim of the referenced article should give you a good idea of what I'm primarily interested in capturing - deaths due to political turmoil in the streets. Think protests-turned-riots, not capital punishment. I will count domestic terrorism (if it is provably tied to current politics) but likely not international terrorism.
The overarching idea is to capture deaths due to internal political discord.