Way back in the innocent days of August 2015, I was sure Trump didn’t really want to be president, and would drop out before the election. So I created this poll:
The actual poll post did not survive the transition to Discourse, but I found it on Way Back and reposted it after the 2020 election. For your convenience, here it is:
Although people were allowed to vote for 15 months, only 14 out of 179 respondents imagined that he could actually win.
So although I and my OP certainly fall in the “dud of a prediction category,” along with most of the other posters and voters, a small percentage of us showed “brilliant predictive powers.” Unfortunately.