Stats junkie successfully predicts another African coup

From Foreign Policy's Passport blog:

Political scientist Jay Ulfelder, who's quickly becoming the Nate Silver of coups, has accurately predicted another one with the ouster of President Francois Bozizé of the Central African Republic. On Monday, rebel fighters cemented control over the country's capital, Bangui, as Bozizé fled to Cameroon for temporary refuge.

A coup isn't something anyone really wants to rejoice in predicting, but in Ulfelder's 2013 forecast of coups, the Central African Republic was ranked in the top 20 most at-risk countries. (Not bad for a phenomenon that's famously difficult to predict.) This comes just one year after Ulfelder successfully predicted coups in Mali and Guinea-Bissau, which he had also categorized as "high-risk" countries.

Now Ulfelder, ever the humble academic, noted that his forecast "presaged" the events in Bangui, but he's not claiming an outright victory because his working definition of coup doesn't include rebel victories over a government (military coups are more of what he's thinking of, though other definitions certainly would identify this weekend's events as a coup.)...MORE