New Delhi: Though national polls as of now suggest that US President Joe Biden is trailing behind challenger and former President Donald Trump by 1.5 percentage points ahead of the presidential election scheduled in November this year, the man who has correctly predicted the results of all such elections, except for the one narrowly in 2000, for four decades now believes that the incumbent is set to retain power.
American historian Allan Lichtman, who has developed a model on the basis of which he makes his predictions about the results of presidential elections, tentatively believes that Biden stands to win.
Lichtman usually makes his final prediction around the month of August during a US presidential election year. In fact, in 2020, ETV Bharat cited Lichtman predicting in August of that year that Biden would emerge victorious against then-incumbent President Trump. What is making news this time around is that Lichtman is making his tentative prediction as early as May.
“I haven’t made a final prediction yet because things are still very fluid on my 13 ‘Keys to the White House’,” he was quoted as saying by FOX 5 TV On Tuesday US time. “Forget all the pundits who say Biden should step aside for a younger candidate,” Lichtman said. “The Democrats’ only chance to win is with Biden running.”
Who is Allan Lichtman and why is he known as the Nostradamus of US presidential elections?
Allan Jay Lichtman, born on April 4, 1947, is an American historian. He has taught at American University in Washington since 1973. Outside of the classroom, Lichtman has testified as an expert witness on civil rights in more than 70 cases for the US Department of Justice and for civil rights groups such as the NAACP, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also consulted for former Vice President Al Gore and Senator Ted Kennedy. He assisted the US Commission on Civil Rights investigation into voting irregularities in Florida during the 2000 election, submitting his statistical analysis of balloting problems. Lichtman concluded, “There were major racial disparities in ballot rejection rates”.
However, he is best known for the “Keys” system, presented in his books The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House. The system uses 13 historical factors to predict whether the popular vote in the election for president of the US will be won by the candidate of the party holding the presidency (regardless of whether the president is the candidate).
What are the ‘Keys to the White House’ model?
Lichtman's prediction model, ‘The Keys to the White House’, is based on a system of 13 true/false statements or “keys” that evaluate various factors influencing the political landscape. This system was developed in collaboration with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, a Russian seismologist, who applied pattern recognition methods used in earthquake prediction to political science. The underlying principle is that elections are primarily referendums on the party in power, not a reflection of the candidates’ personal qualities or campaign events.
The 13 keys are:
Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party’s nomination.
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
Third-party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Long-term economy: Annual real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
Scandal: The administration is untainted by major scandals.
Foreign/military failure: The administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Foreign/military success: The administration achieves major success in foreign or military affairs.
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
According to Lichtman’s system, if six or more of these keys are false, the incumbent party will lose the election. If fewer than six keys are false, the incumbent party will win.
Lichtman’s approach is unique in that it does not rely on opinion polls, campaign strategies, or candidate personalities. Instead, it focuses on the objective performance of the incumbent party’s administration, as well as the overall political and economic landscape.
What are the keys that Biden has to worry about?
According to Lichtman, Biden has definitively lost two keys.
“My first key, the Mandate Key, because they lost US House seats in 2022,” FOX 5 quoted him as saying. “And Key 12, Incumbent Charisma, he’s no John F. Kennedy or Franklin Roosevelt.”
Lichtman acknowledged that there are four keys whose status remains uncertain, and all of them would need to turn against the incumbent party to predict Biden’s defeat. These uncertain or “shaky” keys are:
Third Party: The potential impact of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign as the election approaches.
Social Unrest: Ongoing protests on college campuses related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Foreign/military failure and foreign/military success: The implications of the ongoing wars between Israel and Hamas in West Asia and Ukraine on the administration’s foreign policy record.
For Biden to lose, a lot would have to go wrong across all of these uncertain keys,” Lichtman said. “While unlikely, such a scenario is still possible.”
So, what about Donald Trump’s chances?
According to Robinder Sachdev, president of the independent think tank ImagIndia, this year’s US presidential election is very strange and unprecedented in the sense that a former President facing criminal charges (read Trump) has become the official nominee of the opposition Republican Party
At the same time, Sachdev, a former student of Lichtman at American University, said that the final prediction of the result has not been made yet.
“Lichtman usually makes his prediction after all the primaries of the Democratic and Republican parties are over,” he told ETV Bharat. “The Democratic Party will have its annual national convention in Chicago in August. So, we will have to wait till then for Lichtman’s final prediction.”
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