13 "Keys" to predicting the presidential election

[snafu]

Allan Lichtman is a History professor at American University.  I heard an interview with him about a month ago regarding his 13 “keys” to determining who will be the winner of the Presidential Election this year.  He’s “correctly” predicted all Presidential Elections since Carter or Reagan (not sure which).  He formulated the “keys” with a geologist who was making studies on how to predict earthquakes.

 

In the interview, he said that prior to Covid-19 and the economic downturn, he had Trump winning.  Those two factors flipped the result to Biden.  I don’t know why he made his call so early – and I don’t have his detailed results.  Seems as though he should have waited until a bit later to see where the two determining factors (Covid and the economy) take us.  I also think that his reliance on the reaction to a “novel” virus and an intentional economic shutdown is strange. 

 

Perhaps this year is a bit different than any other.  I’m not sure any clear prediction could be made.

 

The way it works is that if the incumbent candidate or incumbent party nominee can answer “FALSE” to 6 or more of the “keys”, then that candidate will lose.  As it is with every topic in PPP, I’m sure that there will be differing outcomes from different viewpoints.

 

Anyhow, here are the 13 “keys” that Lichtman uses to make his prediction:

1.        True or False.  Party Mandate:  After Midterms, the incumbent party holds more seats inside the House of Representatives than it did after the previous Midterm. Note, this one is FALSE. 2015 House = 247 R and 2019 House = 253 R.
2.        True or False.  Contest:  There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. This one is TRUE.
3.        True or False.  Incumbency:  The incumbent is the sitting President. This one is TRUE.
4.        True or False.  Third Party:  There is no significant third party or independent campaign. This one is TRUE.
5.        True or False.  Short-term Economy:  The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. This one is FALSE with a caveat**
6.        True or False.  Long-term Economy:  Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. I think this is TRUE.
7.        True or False.  Policy Change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. This one is TRUE.
8.        True or False.  Social Unrest:  There is no sustained social unrest during the term. FALSE.
9.        True or False.  Scandal:  The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. FALSE, though half of the threads debate this very question.
10.        True or False.  Foreign/Military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. TRUE and Probably debatable to some.
11.        True or False.  Foreign/Military Success:  The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. I had this as FALSE until the UAE/Israel Agreement.  Now I have it as TRUE.
12.        True or False.  Incumbent Charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.  I think most people would have this as FALSE.
13.        True or False.  Challenger Charisma:  The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national party hero.  Based on polls       showing “enthusiasm” for Biden, I would call this TRUE.

 

5 FALSE – Trump wins.

I'd wager that there will be differing opinions.

 

 

[RiotAct]

5 and 9 are going to sink Trump’s ship, most likely. (Insert Texas boat parade joke here)

[The Frankish Reich]

I'm not saying you're wrong (a lot of these are in the eye of the beholder), but Prof. Lichtman himself reached a different conclusion:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/us/allan-lichtman-trump-biden-2020-trnd/index.html 

 

My conclusion: it's close, at least in the electoral college, and the Lichtman factors don't really help.

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

57 minutes ago, RiotAct said:

5 and 9 are going to sink Trump’s ship, most likely. (Insert Texas boat parade joke here)

 

...perhaps...but Biden is doing a pretty good job of sinking HIS OWN SHIP......he is the embarrassing poster boy of a Dem coalition presidency and just look at the ruling class of the purported coalition.....could their current "leadership (COUGH)" be an indicator??..............

[snafu]

2 hours ago, RiotAct said:

5 and 9 are going to sink Trump’s ship, most likely. (Insert Texas boat parade joke here)

 

I don’t think any one of the factors is weighted.

If 5 and 9 are already False then those, alone, can’t sink him. According to Lichtman.

 

 

[ComradeKayAdams]

What likely makes Professor Lichtman’s test so good in its predictive power is that it accounts for such a broad range of factors that might possibly play a role in a presidential election. It has its obvious limitations, however. Many of his listed 13 “keys” are subjective in nature and without specific enough parameters. Not having any weighting system for the different criteria doesn’t make sense to me, either.

 

I take issue with the OP’s answer for #6. Without having calculated or looked at the numbers, I imagine that the mean of real per-capita economic growth (GDP) from this 2017-2020 term is lower than the 2009-2016 terms solely due to the year 2020 lowering the average. But even if it’s not, “key” #6 is supposed to be an assessment of the long-term health of the economy. Our federal government’s GROSSLY INADEQUATE intervention between July and likely through October (for political reasons on the left, for ideological reasons on the right) likely ensures that we will be entering an economic depression around January when the home eviction crisis accelerates. The permanent job loss trends I last looked at are pacing toward depression-level numbers. I lost track of how many consecutive weeks we’ve had of over 800,000 new unemployment claims (remember that the pre-pandemic historical record was about 700,000!). About 30 million Americans are currently in the unemployment insurance system, and who knows how many more SHOULD be in one? So many more painful numbers I could cite… We’ve been seeing since June the economic recovery bifurcate between the “haves” and “have nots.” To put it another way, Kudlow’s V-shaped recovery is only a thing if you rotate the V 90 degrees clockwise. At some point businesses will face the reality that there aren’t enough consumers with enough money to spend. If the stock market realizes this and crashes before November 3, I’d want to add a special large weight to the FALSE in factor #6.

 

I also somewhat disagree with the OP on #12, which is about Trump’s “charisma.” I would argue that to many, he most definitely has it and definitely does when compared to Biden. How much can our snake oil salesman-in-chief lie, deflect, and blame his way out of a pandemic and economic calamity? Potentially a lot, I’d say! And running against an opponent who doesn’t know where he is during the late afternoons only helps Trump’s case.

 

I want to add a special category #14 for a black swan-like health crisis, but I guess you could incorporate Covid-19 partly into category #8 (social unrest) and partly into category #9 (major scandal). The social unrest component comes from the disruption that the pandemic is having on people’s daily lives, especially the effect it is having on education this fall. The major scandal component comes from the fact that Trump grossly mismanaged and underplayed the health crisis during the crucial weeks of February and March (not to mention his lack of adequate preparation for a pandemic leading up to 2020).

 

So notice that with factor #6 and factor #12 in limbo, Trump is barely hovering below Prof. Lichtman’s dreaded 6 FALSES pass/fail demarcation line at 4 to 6 FALSES. This kind of verifies what I’ve been saying here for a while now. Trump needs either the economy to get better or he needs to BS his way out of the economic/health disaster in order to win. Now if only we could quantify Trump’s ability to BS…if only we had some sort of POLLING DATA to work with…hmmm…

[Reality Check]

1 minute ago, RealKayAdams said:

What likely makes Professor Lichtman’s test so good in its predictive power is that it accounts for such a broad range of factors that might possibly play a role in a presidential election. It has its obvious limitations, however. Many of his listed 13 “keys” are subjective in nature and without specific enough parameters. Not having any weighting system for the different criteria doesn’t make sense to me, either.

 

I take issue with the OP’s answer for #6. Without having calculated or looked at the numbers, I imagine that the mean of real per-capita economic growth (GDP) from this 2017-2020 term is lower than the 2009-2016 terms solely due to the year 2020 lowering the average. But even if it’s not, “key” #6 is supposed to be an assessment of the long-term health of the economy. Our federal government’s GROSSLY INADEQUATE intervention between July and likely through October (for political reasons on the left, for ideological reasons on the right) likely ensures that we will be entering an economic depression around January when the home eviction crisis accelerates. The permanent job loss trends I last looked at are pacing toward depression-level numbers. I lost track of how many consecutive weeks we’ve had of over 800,000 new unemployment claims (remember that the pre-pandemic historical record was about 700,000!). About 30 million Americans are currently in the unemployment insurance system, and who knows how many more SHOULD be in one? So many more painful numbers I could cite… We’ve been seeing since June the economic recovery bifurcate between the “haves” and “have nots.” To put it another way, Kudlow’s V-shaped recovery is only a thing if you rotate the V 90 degrees clockwise. At some point businesses will face the reality that there aren’t enough consumers with enough money to spend. If the stock market realizes this and crashes before November 3, I’d want to add a special large weight to the FALSE in factor #6.

 

I also somewhat disagree with the OP on #12, which is about Trump’s “charisma.” I would argue that to many, he most definitely has it and definitely does when compared to Biden. How much can our snake oil salesman-in-chief lie, deflect, and blame his way out of a pandemic and economic calamity? Potentially a lot, I’d say! And running against an opponent who doesn’t know where he is during the late afternoons only helps Trump’s case.

 

I want to add a special category #14 for a black swan-like health crisis, but I guess you could incorporate Covid-19 partly into category #8 (social unrest) and partly into category #9 (major scandal). The social unrest component comes from the disruption that the pandemic is having on people’s daily lives, especially the effect it is having on education this fall. The major scandal component comes from the fact that Trump grossly mismanaged and underplayed the health crisis during the crucial weeks of February and March (not to mention his lack of adequate preparation for a pandemic leading up to 2020).

 

So notice that with factor #6 and factor #12 in limbo, Trump is barely hovering below Prof. Lichtman’s dreaded 6 FALSES pass/fail demarcation line at 4 to 6 FALSES. This kind of verifies what I’ve been saying here for a while now. Trump needs either the economy to get better or he needs to BS his way out of the economic/health disaster in order to win. Now if only we could quantify Trump’s ability to BS…if only we had some sort of POLLING DATA to work with…hmmm…

It's not complicated. The state of mind of the voter the moment they get an opportunity to vote is all that matters. The week before the election, the insect level attention span of the body politic will have the full force of Trump's propaganda right before it is time to vote. The global financial system is about to change fundamentally and both parties are antiquated in the face of what is to come. Democrats will stay home that day and continue to load up their U-Hauls. In the next 4 years, the Republican Party will continue their well-earned collapse into their own reformation just like the Democrats. By 2024, the political landscape and financial players will be quite different.

[snafu]

1 hour ago, RealKayAdams said:

What likely makes Professor Lichtman’s test so good in its predictive power is that it accounts for such a broad range of factors that might possibly play a role in a presidential election. It has its obvious limitations, however. Many of his listed 13 “keys” are subjective in nature and without specific enough parameters. Not having any weighting system for the different criteria doesn’t make sense to me, either.

 

I take issue with the OP’s answer for #6. Without having calculated or looked at the numbers, I imagine that the mean of real per-capita economic growth (GDP) from this 2017-2020 term is lower than the 2009-2016 terms solely due to the year 2020 lowering the average. But even if it’s not, “key” #6 is supposed to be an assessment of the long-term health of the economy. Our federal government’s GROSSLY INADEQUATE intervention between July and likely through October (for political reasons on the left, for ideological reasons on the right) likely ensures that we will be entering an economic depression around January when the home eviction crisis accelerates. The permanent job loss trends I last looked at are pacing toward depression-level numbers. I lost track of how many consecutive weeks we’ve had of over 800,000 new unemployment claims (remember that the pre-pandemic historical record was about 700,000!). About 30 million Americans are currently in the unemployment insurance system, and who knows how many more SHOULD be in one? So many more painful numbers I could cite… We’ve been seeing since June the economic recovery bifurcate between the “haves” and “have nots.” To put it another way, Kudlow’s V-shaped recovery is only a thing if you rotate the V 90 degrees clockwise. At some point businesses will face the reality that there aren’t enough consumers with enough money to spend. If the stock market realizes this and crashes before November 3, I’d want to add a special large weight to the FALSE in factor #6.

 

I also somewhat disagree with the OP on #12, which is about Trump’s “charisma.” I would argue that to many, he most definitely has it and definitely does when compared to Biden. How much can our snake oil salesman-in-chief lie, deflect, and blame his way out of a pandemic and economic calamity? Potentially a lot, I’d say! And running against an opponent who doesn’t know where he is during the late afternoons only helps Trump’s case.

 

I want to add a special category #14 for a black swan-like health crisis, but I guess you could incorporate Covid-19 partly into category #8 (social unrest) and partly into category #9 (major scandal). The social unrest component comes from the disruption that the pandemic is having on people’s daily lives, especially the effect it is having on education this fall. The major scandal component comes from the fact that Trump grossly mismanaged and underplayed the health crisis during the crucial weeks of February and March (not to mention his lack of adequate preparation for a pandemic leading up to 2020).

 

So notice that with factor #6 and factor #12 in limbo, Trump is barely hovering below Prof. Lichtman’s dreaded 6 FALSES pass/fail demarcation line at 4 to 6 FALSES. This kind of verifies what I’ve been saying here for a while now. Trump needs either the economy to get better or he needs to BS his way out of the economic/health disaster in order to win. Now if only we could quantify Trump’s ability to BS…if only we had some sort of POLLING DATA to work with…hmmm…

 

I did mention a few things in the OP...

— I don’t know why Lichtman made his prediction in July.

— This year is a bit odd with a novel virus and the reaction to it. However, Lichtman has apparently gone back and historically applied this to all past elections. So I don’t know why I’d think this year should be different.  The country has held elections in weird times before. 

— The economy was humming in February.  My answer to #6 was based on that.

— The main reaction to the pandemic was to create an artificial depression. Included in that was a government-backed incentive to *not* work by paying people a lump sum and $600/week. My answer to #5 was based on this. 

— I am afraid of all the government money that was pumped into the economy, but as you say, we will find out more in January, which is after the November election. 

— More than half the county hates Trump passionately.  Only about a quarter find him appealing. There’s no other answer to #12 than “false”

— I don’t mind anyone taking issue with my answers.  Keep in mind that even if you flip #6 and #12, you’re still at five “false”. 

 

Note: I’m not really calling the election. I think it will be way too close to call unless the debates make the picture clear. I just thought this Lichtman analysis was interesting stuff for conversation.