Predicting the Next President by Alan Lichtman, American University.
I initially had another book scheduled to talk about this week (early November, 2020) but I came across Lichtman’s book at 11 PM Sunday night and began reading it. Given that the election is finally here, it makes sense to look at Predicting the Next President now.
American University Professor Alan Lichtman has developed a methodology to predict the outcome of United States presidential elections. Rather than crunching numbers - developing a quantitative predictive formula - this is a qualitative model that has 13 Keys that will determine the winner of the contest. He believes that the primary driver of presidential election outcomes is the performance of the party holding the White House. His factors include economic boom and bust, foreign policy successes and failures, social unrest, scandal, and policy innovation. The Keys are driven by a dominant idea: that the American electorate is pragmatic.
Naturally, the methodology is based on geophysical earthquake predictions. At CalTech in 1981, Lichtman met Vladimir Kellis-Borok, the head honcho in Russia at forecasting earthquakes. The two hit it off and figured out how to use geophysical concepts to predict presidential elections. That makes no sense to Bob in the Basement before or after opening that second bottle of wine, but it works. While it seems strange to ignore all of the things that knowledgeable people think matter in choosing our chief executive, Lichtman’s been right about every election starting with 1984. He called the 2016 election for Donald Trump when just about everybody was sure that Hillary Clinton would win.
Unlike many alternative models, his Keys include no polling data and minimize the role of economic concerns alone. He doesn’t place much stock in the traditional election grist – debates, campaigns, advertising, speeches, endorsements, rallies, platforms, promises, or campaign tactics. Rather, presidential elections are primarily referenda on the performance of the party holding the White House.According to the theory, if the nation fares well during the term of the incumbent party, that party wins another four years in office; otherwise, the challenging party prevails.
According to the Keys model, nothing that a candidate has said or done during a campaign, when the public discounts conventional electioneering as political spin, has changed his or her prospects at the polls.
The Keys
Lichtman and Keilis-Borok developed 13 diagnostic questions – the Keys – that are statements that favor victory for the incumbent party. Initially, Lichtman predicted who would win the popular vote, but in 2004 he modified it to pick the electoral college winner, not the person who got the most votes.
This is confusing. At a recent Brandeis University virtual event, Lichtman said that the Keys to the White House work in “geophysical earthquake terms.” When there is “stability, the party holding the White House keeps the White House,” and “when there is an earthquake, the party holding the White House loses.”
Each Key represents a category on which the candidates are assessed. Each of the Key statements is either true or false, and when six or more keys go against an incumbent candidate, the rival is favored to win. A false answer means a negative check for the incumbent party’s candidate.
Hang in there. Looking at an actual election later (Kennedy-Nixon 1960) helps clarify things.
Political Keys
1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
Performance Keys
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy
.8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Personality Keys
12. Incumbent (party) charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger (party) charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Answers to the questions posed in the Keys require judgments, but the judgments are shaped by explicit definitions of each Key. For example, let's look at Key 2 - a contested incumbent party nomination. That is clearly defined as one in which the combined losing candidates secured at least one-third of the delegate votes at the convention. Judgments are also informed by how individual keys have been defined in all previous elections covered by the system going back to 1860. For example, to qualify as charismatic (Keys 12 or 13 – the most judgmental of all keys), an incumbent or challenging-party candidate must measure up to Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, or Teddy Roosevelt, pretty high bars.
Each of the thirteen Keys is stated as a threshold condition that always favors the re-election of the party holding the White House. For example, Key 5 is phrased as “The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.” Each key can then be assessed as true or false prior to an upcoming election and the winner predicted according to a simple decision rule. Unlike other systems for predicting election results, the Keys do not assume a fixed relationship between election results and one more dependent variable, such as economic growth or presidential approval ratings. Rather, predictions are based on an index comprised of the number of false or false keys:
When five or fewer keys are false or negative, the incumbent party wins; when any six or more are false or negative, the challenging party wins. A threshold of six false/negative keys separates the losers from the winners without regard to their percentages.
Huh?
By now, you’re probably as confused as I was while I was reading the book. It begins to make sense when the author talks about actual elections and after you’ve consumed a few glasses of wine.
1960: John Kennedy and Richard Nixon
John F. Kennedy’s eyelash win – by less than two-tenths of a percentage point – over Richard Nixon in 1960 was clearly anticipated by the GOP’s eight-key deficit going into the election. Remember, if six or more Keys are false or False, the incumbent party - the Republicans here - loses, which is what happened.
Key 1 (Congressional mandate in the previous election.)</strong> This became negative for the Republicans because the party lost 47 seats in the 1958 election. They had no mandate going forward. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Key 2 (Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.)This was not a problem for the GOP since Nixon was unopposed at the convention. The Key did not go negative
Key 3 (There is no incumbent president.) There was - Ike. The Key did not go negative.
Key 4 (The presence of a viable third-party candidate.) This usually hurts the incumbent party. If there is a solid alternative candidate, this key goes negative. In this election, there was none so the Key did not go negative.
Key 5 (Short-term economy:The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.) During the campaign, the country was in a slight recession due to Ike’s tight money policy. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Key 6 (Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.) Overall during Eisenhower’s second term, real per-capita growth was less than 1%, pretty weak. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Key 7 (Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.) This went against the Republicans because there was very limited policy change during Ike’s second term. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Key 8 (Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.) There wasn’t any. So, this Key does not go negative for the incumbent party.
Key 9 (Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by a major scandal.) This goes negative if the incumbent administration is beset by serious impropriety. Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams, was involved in some minor shenanigans accepting gifts from a businessman, but it wasn't serious. So, this Key does not go negative for the incumbent party, the GOP.
Key 10 (Foreign or military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.) In 1960, the Russians shot down Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 spy plane, the response to which Ike fumbled. Around the same time, Fidel Castro, initially hailed as a hero, was setting up a communist regime in Cuba, 90 miles off our coast. Key 10 turned against the incumbent party. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Key 11 (Foreign/military success:The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.) Ike didn’t do much in foreign policy during his second term. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Key 12 (Incumbent party nominee has charisma.) Richard Nixon did not have that. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Key 13 (Challenger nominee has charisma.) John F. Kennedy did have charisma. So, the Key was false or Negative.
Tally: There are 8 False or NEGATIVE Keys here. (DON’T YOU LOVE CAPS!) for the incumbent Republican party nominee, Richard Nixon. If you have 6 or more you lose. He did
2016: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
I won’t go through this one as meticulously as the Kennedy-Nixon contest, but, based on the 13 Keys, Hillary Clinton would lose. I’m just going to talk about the false or negative Keys for the incumbent party’s candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Key 1 (Congressional mandate) NEGATIVE. The Democrats did not do well in the 2014 Congressional election and lost a lot of seats
.Key 2 (No serious primary contest) NEGATIVE. Bernie and Hillary slugged it out deep into the primary season.
Key 4 (A viable third-party candidate) NEGATIVE. The Libertarians ran a strong campaign in key states, especially Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Key 7 (Major policy change) NEGATIVE. President Obama didn’t do any major initiatives in his second term.
Key 11 (Foreign/military success) NEGATIVE. Not much happened here.
Key 12 (Incumbent party nominee has charisma) NEGATIVE. Hillary Clinton was not Bill in this regard.
Key 13 (Challenger has charisma) This was a positive for the challenger, Donald Trump, a huge TV star, who had charisma. This was not good for the incumbent party nominee, so it’s a NEGATIVE for Hillary.
Tally: There are 7 negative Keys for Hillary Clinton, one more than the six that are needed to predict a loss, and she did lose the election.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden
Based on the Keys, in late 2019, Lichtman said that Trump looked likely to win easily in 2020, but the COVID-19 epidemic looks like it cost him both economic keys (Keys 5 and 6), and George Floyd’s killing looks like it cost him the social unrest key (Key 8). Those two events took the total number of negative keys from four (late 2109) to seven today, which would predict a Trump loss.
There is a caveat here, however. Many people will look to the pre-COVID economy, which was very strong, and give Trump a pass because the virus came out of left field and should not be held against the president. Similarly, many people may agree with the president that the social unrest is due to rioting in the streets due to a breakdown of law and order because of lax liberal mayors and governors. Those points may not resonate in Massachusetts, the most reliably Democratic voting state in the country, but you can’t ignore them. They will resonate in other parts of the country.We shall see.
Bob’s Take
This was a mercifully short book, a bit over 200 pages, but it was really hard to understand for the first hundred pages. The concept of false or negative keys determining a positive outcome - an electoral win – is counter-intuitive, but it works.
While the Keys are word problems - qualitative measures– there is a strong quantitative model underpinning them. Lichtman and Kellis-Borok used a lot of data to come up with the Keys - turnout; relationships between voting in midterm elections and presidential contests; nuanced economic indicators; public opinion based on news events; what defines a serious third-party candidate; and such.
I like the idea of reducing scads of data into understandable questions. Back in one phase of my interminable 16 years of grad school, I developed a statistical model to predict student achievement scores (SATs, MCAS, whatever). I started with 32 quantitative variables and kept reducing or factoring them down to six variables that sort of made sense. It was still pretty hard to explain what I was doing. I barely understood it. Lichtman’s approach simplifies things down to an understandable level.
Lichtman’s advice to candidates at the end of the book is interesting but probably unlikely to happen: Fire the hucksters; Concentrate on substance; Don’t play it safe; Don’t hide from ideology; Take the high road; Pick the best candidate available for the number-two slot; and, Get off the merry-go-round.
The last point asks candidates to stop all of the frantic and exhausting campaigning and connect to voters in other ways. That is what Joe Biden is doing. That is not what Donald Trump is doing.
Lichtman doesn’t believe that all of the campaign hoopla has much impact so why do crazy hoopla-ing. It’s not a bad point. As a political consultant back in the day, I often wondered how much a lot of the media stuff we did actually mattered.
