Allan Litchman has used his "13 Keys" to correctly predict every presidential election since 1984

[Rat Diva]

The local paper ran this interview with Prof. Allan Litchman today. He is the co-developer of the 13 Keys system, which is 13 true/false statements; if at least 7 of 13 are true, the candidate from the incumbent party wins. Apparently this has worked for every presidential election since 1984, and can be replied retroactively to every presidential election for the past 120 years or so.

Not surprisingly, this one is proving a toughie even for him, but since we solve all the world's problems here I thought it would be interesting to take a look.

The keys are in boldface; my answers are, well, not. Feel free to quibble.

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. False. The Democrats got hammered in the last midterms.

2: Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. This is one of Litchman's iffy ones. I'm going with true, unless something really wild happens at the convention.

3: Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. False.

4: Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. True right now.

5: Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. True.

6: Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. True.

7: Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. False; Obama's national policy didn't change between terms.

8: Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. True. Plenty of unrest but I wouldn't call it sustained.

9: Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. True. Litchman considers "scandal" to mean something like Watergate, and Obama's been boringly virtuous

10: Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. Gonna go with true; it's no worse than it was.

11: Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. False; ain't better, either.

12: Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. Hella false.

13: Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. Thankfully, this one is true according to Litchman's reasoning: Trump is popular with a loud, vocal minority, and hugely unpopular with most everyone else.

So I get 8 true, 5 false, HRC POTUS FTW.

Acutally, I don't see that Bernie winning the nomination would change the overall results any; he gains a point for charisma, but loses a point for "serious contest for party nomination."

[Flying Squid with Goggles]

#2 I would rate as false for both parties - the primary fight on both sides has been pretty big this year. Yeah, we have a good idea of who will be the respective nominees, but that wasn't clear until the end of April, really.


In the same vein, #2, 7, 8, 9, 12, and 13 are all sufficiently fuzzy that I'm not confident this is a good metric at all. I suspect by changing the outcomes of those 6 questions you could get what you want out of it, which makes it a little too flexible for objective predictions.

[hatesfreedom]

Well, now all that is left for the democrats is to sit back and watch the Bernie fanatics have a complete melt down.

Sorry, continue watching them (just the fanatics) have a complete melt down.

My apologies for the mistake.

[Jaglavak]

Why do you hate Bernmerica?

[Pere]

Originally Posted by Rat Diva

He is the co-developer of the 13 Keys system, which is 13 true/false statements; if at least 7 of 13 are true, the candidate from the incumbent party wins. Apparently this has worked for every presidential election since 1984, and can be replied retroactively to every presidential election for the past 120 years or so.

I suspect the system has been tweaked a few times to bring its predictions in line with events.

In every Presidential election cycle, there is always an academic to be found with a system that predicts the result... each way. Here is a current Trump predictor, for example.

[hatesfreedom]

Originally Posted by Jaglavak

Why do you hate Bernmerica?

I really liked Bernie in the beginning, but much like religion it was all doomed to shit as soon as enough humans got involved.

Now a small minority on my social media pages has ruined it for me

Also I always liked HRC from her State department days. So I was cool whoever won. Blessed I was.

[DrWas]

Originally Posted by hatesfreedom

Well, now all that is left for the democrats is to sit back and watch the Bernie fanatics have a complete melt down.

Sorry, continue watching them (just the fanatics) have a complete melt down.

My apologies for the mistake.

Indeed, then we get to watch 4 - 8 years of Hillary voters pretending that slaughtering Syrians isn't what they voted for.