The conclave guessing game: lessons from a numbers geek

posted by Creator Mundi

By Carol Glatz

Cardinals from around the world in the Sistine Chapel March 12, 2013, as they began the conclave to elect a new pope. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

VATICAN CITY — A year-ago today, as the world’s cardinals solemnly filed into the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope, news outlets, blogs and betting sites were abuzz with papal prognostications.

I wanted to take an informal stab at it myself using some tips from the U.S. statistician, Nate Silver, who had correctly predicted the outcome of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

I thought it’d be a fun experiment to apply some of the approaches he had outlined in his book, “The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t.”

Here’s what I looked at in the few days before the conclave:

What were the challenges facing the world and the church in 1978 and 2005?
What “winning” qualities did Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI — the men who were elected those years — possess?

From there, I drafted a rough list of what church leaders and others were saying in 2013 about the pressing challenges.

Here are just a few examples:

Shut off from the outside world, cardinals from around the world cast ballots to elect a new pontiff in a conclave that began March 12, 2013. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano)

Religious freedom, oppression in parts of Asia; persecution and violence in the Middle East and Africa; infringements in the western world.
Secularism and globalization.
Latin America losing Catholics, Asia growing.
Church needing to be “attractive,” new evangelization and need to be “outspoken.”
Making Jesus the center of liturgy, lives, prayer.
Problem of sex abuse.
Catechism and solid foundations of faith.
Attention to young people.
Orthodoxy, importance of Catholic identity for universities, charities.
Lapsed Catholics; family; sacraments.
Vocations.