Why the Democrats will take back the White House

[Adrian Laguna]

It's been proven with the power of SCIENCE!

Allan Lichtman: The 13 Keys to the White House ... Why the Democrats will take back the White House

[Mr. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and the author of The Keys to the White House (1996).]

The election for president is more than a year away. Neither major party has as yet chosen a nominee. Yet the results of the 2008 election are already in: the Democrats will recapture the White House next fall, whether they nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. Only an unprecedented cataclysmic change in American politics during the next year could salvage Republican hopes.

This good news for Democrats and grim news for Republicans comes from the “Keys to the White House,” a historically based prediction system that I developed in 1981, in collaboration with Volodia Keilis-Borok, an authority on the mathematics of prediction models.

The Keys retrospectively accurately account for the popular vote winners of every presidential election from 1860 through 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2004. The keys model predicted George W. Bush’s reelection in April 2003.

The Keys show that elections are not horse races in which candidates surge ahead or fall behind on the campaign trail, with pollsters keeping score. Rather, a pragmatic American electorate chooses a president according to the performance of the party holding the White House as measured by the consequential events and episodes of a term — economic boom and bust, foreign policy successes and failures, social unrest, scandal, and policy innovation. Nothing that a candidate has said or done during a campaign, when the public discounts everything as political, has changed his prospects at the polls. Debates, advertising, television appearances, news coverage, and campaign strategies — the usual grist for the punditry mills — count for virtually nothing on Election Day.

The Keys include 13 diagnostic questions that are stated as propositions that favor reelection of the incumbent party. (See table below.) When five or fewer of these propositions are false or turned against the party holding the White House, that party wins another term in office. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins.

Even without counting a single economic key against the incumbent Republicans, they currently have a seven key deficit, one more than necessary to predict their defeat in 2008.

The following Keys currently count against the incumbent party.

# The party’s losses in the 2006 midterm elections topple Mandate Key 1.
# The battle to replace George W. Bush costs the party Contest Key 2.
# Bush’s inability to run again in 2008 dooms Incumbency Key 3.
# The lack of a second-term policy revolution forfeits Policy Change Key 7.
# The disaster in Iraq costs the administration both Foreign/Military Success Key 9 and Failure Key 10.
# No GOP candidate equals the charisma of Ronald Reagan or the heroic stature of Dwight Eisenhower, toppling Charisma/National Hero Key 12.

The following three Keys currently favor the incumbent Republican Party.

# The absence of social upheavals comparable to the 1960’s, avoids the loss of Social Unrest Key 8.
# The failure of scandals to impact the president directly keeps Scandal Key 9 from falling against the GOP.
# The Democratic challenger is unlikely to match the charisma of Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, keeping the Challenger Charisma/Hero Key 13 in line for the incumbents.

The following Keys are uncertain:

# Third Party Key 4 depends on whether New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who switched from Republican to independent, chooses to run an insurgent campaign for president.
# Short-Term Economy Key 5 and Long-Term Economy Key 6 depend upon uncertain economic forecasts for the upcoming year.

Two caveats are in order. First, as a nationally based system, the Keys predict only the popular vote. In the last hundred years, however, the popular and Electoral College votes have diverged only in the 2000 election. For the special circumstances of that election, see, Lichtman, “What Really Happened in Florida’s 2000 Presidential Election,” Journal of Legal Studies 32(1), 2003). Second, the Democrats may well introduce an element of uncertainly by making a path-breaking nomination of either a woman, Hillary Clinton, or an African-American, Barack Obama. The keys, however, are a robust system that has endured through momentous changes in the electorate, the economy, the society, and the technology of elections. It is unlikely that any contingency will alter the negative verdict on the party in power.

The verdict of the Keys for 2008 does not depend on the particular candidate nominated by either party. So my advice to Republicans and Democrats alike in the primary elections is to vote for the candidate you believe in for 2008 and forget the misleading pursuit of the false grail of so-called “electability.”

Summary of the 13 Keys as of September 2007:

The Keys are stated to favor the reelection of the incumbent party. When five or fewer are false, the incumbent party wins. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins.

KEY 1 (Party Mandate): After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections. (FALSE)

KEY 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination. (FALSE)

KEY 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president. (FALSE)

KEY 4 (Third party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign. (UNCERTAIN)

KEY 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. (UNCERTAIN)

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

KEY 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. (FALSE)

KEY 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term. (TRUE)

KEY 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. (TRUE)

KEY 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (FALSE)

KEY 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (FALSE)

KEY 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (FALSE)

KEY 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (TRUE)

Results: TRUE: 3 KEYS; FALSE: 7 KEYS; UNCERTAIN: 3 KEYS
Prediction: INCUMBENT REPUBLICANS LOSE POPULAR VOTE

The Republicans should start quaking in their boots now. Unless they're creationists, those don't believe in science.

[Drooling Iguana]

The fact that keys 8 and 9 are considered to be true for the Bush administration saddens me greatly.

[Patrick Degan]

One further caveat: this method has failed to take into account the real possibility that there are leading Democrats somewhere working on the problem of how to lose an election their party has in the bag.

[Guardsman Bass]

They might already have done that, what with their stubbornness on the whole Florida frontloading issue.

[Metatwaddle]

Untainted by major scandal- what? They've had plenty of scandals, and some of them - like Abu Ghraib and the entire Gonzalez/wiretapping thing - have been "major", I think.

As for #13, I think Obama is as charismatic a politician as I've ever seen. If the Democrats nominate him, I don't think #13 will be so certainly in the Republicans' favor anymore.

[Crown]

One further caveat: this method has failed to take into account the real possibility that there are leading Democrats somewhere working on the problem of how to lose an election their party has in the bag.

That is scuh a fucking awesome quote.

[Flagg]

One further caveat: this method has failed to take into account the real possibility that there are leading Democrats somewhere working on the problem of how to lose an election their party has in the bag.

That is scuh a fucking awesome quote.

It has the unfortunate bonus of being 100% accurate, too. These would be the same Democratic leaders who scoffed at Deans 50 state initiative and tried to get rid of him after he pretty much won back congress for them.

Think James Carvill.

I think some of these douchebags would honestly rather have a Republican like Bush in office rather than a Democrat like Kucinich or even Edwards.

[Darth Wong]

Untainted by major scandal- what? They've had plenty of scandals, and some of them - like Abu Ghraib and the entire Gonzalez/wiretapping thing - have been "major", I think.

They're "major" to you. To Joe Sixpack, they're random noise.

[Flagg]

Untainted by major scandal- what? They've had plenty of scandals, and some of them - like Abu Ghraib and the entire Gonzalez/wiretapping thing - have been "major", I think.

They're "major" to you. To Joe Sixpack, they're random noise.

Not to mention the fact that a good chunk of Americans are in total agreement with what happened at Abu Ghraib and with Warrentless wiretapping. And another big ass segment of Americans just don't give a fuck about it.

[Ryan Thunder]

Untainted by major scandal- what? They've had plenty of scandals, and some of them - like Abu Ghraib and the entire Gonzalez/wiretapping thing - have been "major", I think.

They're "major" to you. To Joe Sixpack, they're random noise.

Not to mention the fact that a good chunk of Americans are in total agreement with what happened at Abu Ghraib and with Warrentless wiretapping. And another big ass segment of Americans just don't give a fuck about it.

So then it isn't really much of a scandal then, is it?

Or is that definition independent of the populace?

[Flagg]

They're "major" to you. To Joe Sixpack, they're random noise.

Not to mention the fact that a good chunk of Americans are in total agreement with what happened at Abu Ghraib and with Warrentless wiretapping. And another big ass segment of Americans just don't give a fuck about it.

So then it isn't really much of a scandal then, is it?

Or is that definition independent of the populace?

They were scandals within government and alot of the media. But not for most Americans in the long run. The Mark Foley thing was a bigger deal to most people than Arabs being dehumanized and our Constitution being shredded.

[Pablo Sanchez]

So then it isn't really much of a scandal then, is it?

Or is that definition independent of the populace?

No, the concept of scandal is entirely dependent on popular conception of what's going. This can lead to a perverse situation in which fucking a chubby girl in the mouth is a far bigger scandal than incarcerating and torturing people, some of whom we know to have been innocent, in secret prisons in third world countries.

It's sort of weird to find myself in the position of absolutely hating the media for the past five or six years for the way that they report on the Bush administration, when for the ten years before that I mainly just laughed at right wing loons who accused the media of liberal bias.

[Flagg]

So then it isn't really much of a scandal then, is it?

Or is that definition independent of the populace?

No, the concept of scandal is entirely dependent on popular conception of what's going. This can lead to a perverse situation in which fucking a chubby girl in the mouth is a far bigger scandal than incarcerating and torturing people, some of whom we know to have been innocent, in secret prisons in third world countries.

It's sort of weird to find myself in the position of absolutely hating the media for the past five or six years for the way that they report on the Bush administration, when for the ten years before that I mainly just laughed at right wing loons who accused the media of liberal bias.

It's really disgusting when you look back at the constant critical coverage of Clinton. The media hounded him for 8 fucking years on bullshit story after bullshit story until they finally managed to pin him down on getting his dick sucked by a Jew on Easter.

I always had some modicum of respect and trust in the media until the 2000 elections where they cast this rich bitch New England preppie Bush as this noble cowboy hero while villifying Gore every chance they got.

[Sidewinder]

Whatever happens, I hope the new president does something to get the US the hell out of motherfucking Iraq. I've already lost a friend there, I don't want to lose any more.

[Flagg]

Whatever happens, I hope the new president does something to get the US the hell out of motherfucking Iraq. I've already lost a friend there, I don't want to lose any more.

I wouldn't hold your breath. The best I think we can hope for is a major drawdown in the number of troops, but I doubt the US will completely withdraw any time within the next decade.

[drachefly]

Ever heard of Bill Richardson? He's your big chance.

Or Ron Paul, depending which side of the aisle you prefer.

[Flagg]

Ever heard of Bill Richardson? He's your big chance.

Or Ron Paul, depending which side of the aisle you prefer.

Niether of whom has a chance in hell of winning. Al Gore is polling higher than both of those guys and he's not even running.

[Uraniun235]

Is the OP seriously suggesting that history is a science? Because I know tenured history professors who will say otherwise, let alone a great many actual scientists.

[Ubiquitous]

Is the OP seriously suggesting that history is a science? Because I know tenured history professors who will say otherwise, let alone a great many actual scientists.

Historians would love for their profession to be linked to the sciences. They have been trying to do it for generations. Every single one has failed.

[DavidEC]

I don't follow American politics as much as I should, but doesn't Democrat frontrunner infighting count for much? Words like "fabricated controversy" from Obama and "irresponsible and naïve" from Clinton cannot play well with the 'strong leadership' part of the electorate, which is the sort of thing Republicans exploit well.

[Darth Wong]

I don't follow American politics as much as I should, but doesn't Democrat frontrunner infighting count for much? Words like "fabricated controversy" from Obama and "irresponsible and naïve" from Clinton cannot play well with the 'strong leadership' part of the electorate, which is the sort of thing Republicans exploit well.

True. Fascists are really big on "strong leadership", which is a fascist euphemism for "no dissent". That's why the internal dissent of the Democratic party makes them look weak to the fascist demographic.

[DavidEC]

And the crux of it is, you can always say there is a need for strong leadership. Imagine you're a Republican American presidential candidate in the 20s: "We need strong leadership to recover from WWI."

30s: "...recover from economic depression."
40s: obvious.
50s: "Red Menace gonna get ya! Strong leadership!"
60s: "Stem the tide of moral decay! Strong leadership!"
70s: "Revitalise America. Strong leadership!"
80s: "Red Menace... mk2. Strong leadership! "
90s: "...Leadership needed for the new world."
00s: "Fight terrorism. Do I even have to say it? Vote for me, your strong leader."
2008: "Stay the course! Strong leadership in Iraq! Even though we Republicans got you into this mess."

It reminds me of a slightly worrying North African Muslim colleague/friend I had in secondary school, who spoke of the need for a strong Arab leader to fix that region's problems. He didn't really have an answer to the fact that there have been strong Arab leaders and the region is still f-ed up. (Come to mention it, partly BECAUSE of those leaders.)

The Führerprinzip. When you can't be bothered with boring stuff like "mature liberal democracy" or "efficient institutions," always appeal with the Führerprinzip, watered down to the appropriate level for your country.

[Coyote]

I've had to remind people of this before. The Media are not here to inform or enlighten us. They are here to make money. By spinning lurid tales of sex, power, spoiled Hollywood princesses and the occassional informative article to shore up "legitimacy", they are in the mix to provide advertisers a vehicle upon which to firehose their products images into your living room.

Big Media = Big Business.

And who provides Big Business with whatever they want?

The Republican Party, which has manged to sell the idea that "what's good for business is good for America-- and Americans."

[Starglider]

I've been amusing myself by trying to image what exactly the Republican voters think will happen if the Democrats take the White House. My best guess; 'The economy will crash due to crippling taxes, illegal immigrants will take all the jobs, there will be a terrorist attack every month (BECAUSE IF WE LEAVE IRAQ THE TERRORISTS WILL FOLLOW US HOME!!!), and worst of all America will lose God's favour due to gay marrige and there will be a horrible string of natural disasters as we suffer his wrath'.

[MKSheppard]

That's why the internal dissent of the Democratic party makes them look weak to the fascist demographic.

There's plenty of dissent within the Republican Party between various factions. However; the GOP has always managed to hammer out coalitions between the various branches and groups of the party during the Primary seasons every couple of years.

Meanwhile, the Democrats by dint of WHO they claim to represent; e.g. progressives, always seem to be forming circular firing squads.