Alan Lichtman is a history professor at American University who has correctly predicted the winner of all but one presidential election since 1984, and he has some bad news for failed former president Donald Trump: You’re about to lose back-to-back bids for the White House.
According to The Guardian, Lichtman believes “a lot would have to go wrong” before November for President Joe Biden to not win a second term in office.
Here’s how Lichtman makes his determination of who will win: He uses 13 true or false questions. If six or more go against the White House party, it will lose. If fewer than six are against them, the party in power will win.
What are the 13 criteria?
1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US 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.
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 effects 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.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Oh, and for those readers who think Lichtman is anti-Trump, he correctly predicted Donald would win in 2016 and then lose in 2020.
How did Lichtman correctly call the 2016 race for Trump when nearly every poll showed Hillary Clinton ahead?
“The critical sixth key was the contest key: Bernie Sanders’s contest against Clinton. It was an open seat so you lost the incumbency key. The Democrats had done poorly in 2014 so you lost that key. There was no big domestic accomplishment following the Affordable Care Act in the previous term, and no big foreign policy splashy success following the killing of Bin Laden in the first term, so there were just enough keys. It was not an easy call.”
Trump lost in 2020 due in large part to his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, Lichtman notes.
“The pandemic is what did him in. He congratulated me for predicting him but he didn’t understand the keys. The message of the keys is it’s governance not campaigning that counts and instead of dealing substantively with the pandemic, as we know, he thought he could talk his way out of it and that sank him.”
But perhaps most notable is that Lichtman discounts polling, suggesting it simply doesn’t consider enough factors and only succeeds in providing a snapshot of the overall horserace that’s rarely correct.
“Not only are polls a snapshot but they are not predictors. They don’t predict anything and there’s no such thing as, ‘if the election were held today’. That’s a meaningless statement.”
And what might happen if Trump is convicted of a crime?
“It’s always possible there could be a cataclysmic enough event outside the scope of the keys that could affect the election and here we do have, for the first time, not just a former president but a major party candidate sitting in a trial and who knows if he’s convicted – and there’s a good chance he will be – how that might scramble things.”
So what are we to make of a poll released last week that shows Trump leading Biden by six points? Based on history and how wrong the polls have been and how right Professor Lichtman has outperformed them, it’s safe to say those numbers will be wrong yet again and Lichtman will add another feather to his cap.
