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The 13 Keys to Election ‘24 [1]

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Date: 2024-08-04  

(Originally published at Forward Kentucky)

We interview Dr. Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University and author of the 13 Keys – a model for predicting who will win the presidential election. Dr. Lichtman's model has correctly predicted the winner of the presidency since 1984. What is he saying about this year’s race? (Transcript below the video.)

So we’re here today with Dr. Alan Lichtman, professor of history at American University and author of the 13 Keys Model for Predicting Presidential Elections. Dr. Lichtman, welcome to the state of Kentucky.

Thank you, Bruce, happy to be here.

Well, I’m very excited to have you here because obviously I know of your model and I have followed it for a while, but for the sake of our viewers and listeners, why don’t you go quickly through the 13 keys? And by the way, for our viewers and listeners, don’t try to write them all down. I will put them in the show notes below. So go ahead, Dr. Lichtman.

Yes, the keys are the alternative to the pundits and the pollsters who do not have a 40-year track record of success like the keys to the White House do. The keys essentially gauge how elections for president really work as votes up or down on the strength and performance of the White House party. And they are simple, true/false questions always phrased as an answer of true favors the reelection of the White House party. And if six or more of the keys are false, the White House party is a predicted loser, otherwise they’re a predicted winner.

Here are the 13 keys. The mandate key, based upon midterm elections for US House, incumbency, internal party contests for the White House party, third party, short and long-term economy, policy change, scandal and social unrest, foreign/military failure and success, and only two keys have anything to do with the candidates themselves. And they’re very high threshold keys.

They ask whether the incumbent party candidate is one of those once in a generation inspirational candidates who converts a lot of the opposition like Franklin Roosevelt on the Democratic side or Ronald Reagan on the Republican side. It asks that whether the incumbent party candidate fills that criteria and whether the challenging party candidate does not because the keys are always phrased. So an answer of true favors the reelection of the White House party.

And remember, six of these true false questions have to be false to predict the defeat of the White House party. And the keys have been correct since I predicted Ronald Reagan’s reelection in April, 1982, nearly three years ahead of time, during what was then the worst recession since the Great Depression when his approval ratings were in the low 40% range and 60% of the American people according to at least one poll said he was too old to run for reelection. And in 2016, I went against all the conventional wisdom and almost to predict Donald Trump’s win, which did not make me very popular in 90% plus Democratic Washington DC, where I teach at American University.

Yes, I can well imagine that that was not a popular thing, but of course, you were right. Incumbency is an interesting key because we had an incumbent. Now we have the vice president running in his place. Does that count as incumbency or not?

Under my system, it does not. Incumbency is a purely binary key. Either the sitting president is running or not. Doesn’t matter whether the vice president is running. George H.W. Bush, the vice president in 1988 did not win, for example, the incumbency key, nor did Walter Mondale in 1984, the former vice president for Jimmy Carter.

Okay, so there’s one key on the current Democratic candidate that’s gone. You mentioned once in a generation kind of candidate. Was Trump that kind of candidate in 2016?

I did not give him the key in 2016 or in 2020 because of the very specific criteria laid out in my book. Got my new book out, “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2024,” the eighth edition of the “Keys” series. And it says you have to be broadly appealing. You can’t just appeal to a narrow base. So my best examples are FDR and Reagan, who won six elections by landslides. Donald Trump was in two elections and lost the votes of the American people by 10 million votes. So he doesn’t fit because yes, he’s got a lot of pizzazz, but he appeals only to a narrow base. And that does not fit the definition of my keys.

Bruce, I get constant barrages of people who claim, they can call my keys better than I can. And my answer to all of those folks is, you wanna create your own prediction system, go right ahead. But if you’re gonna use my system, you’ve got to stick with the criteria as defined in my book, and you’ve got to stick with the ways I’ve answered these questions, developmentally going all the way back to the horse and buggy days of politics in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected, and prospectively since 1984.

So, okay. So Trump wasn’t a once in a lifetime kind of candidate, which I certainly agree with. He’s a once in a lifetime kind of candidate, but not the kind I’d like to see.

I hear you.

So what about Kamala Harris? Certainly has generated a tremendous amount of excitement, at least among Democrats. Is she in that criteria?

No, it takes some time to be established in that criteria. Remember, she tried for the Democratic nomination in 2020 and failed pretty badly. So yeah, the transition from Biden to Harris has created a lot of enthusiasm in the Democratic Party. It may be what we call a Hawthorne effect. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the phenomenon of the Hawthorne effect, which is when you make a big change, you get at least a temporary, very positive effect, which may or may not last. But certainly you can’t call her an FDR at this point.

For the benefit of our listeners and viewers, the Hawthorne effect, and correct me if I get this wrong, was about an experiment in a factory where they lit part of the factory better than the other part, assuming that the lit part would produce higher productivity. But in fact, productivity went up in both parts and they realized it was simply because they were paying attention.

Exactly, simply change. I did a study once of changes in sports managers and I did find a Hawthorne effect there as well. I’m not saying the Harris effect is a Hawthorne, but it’s only been what, a week or two? Way too early to make our assessments of whether she could emerge as an FDR. It’s a very high threshold to fulfill.

So here we are in a videocast and podcast that’s focused on Kentucky. So obviously I’m going to ask what difference the vice presidential pick makes in your model?

Thinking about Andy Beshear.

Well, I’m coming to Andy, but I’m just wondering in general, does the vice presidential pick make any difference at all?

The short answer is none. I don’t have a vice presidential key. And if you look at elections over the past several decades, aside from the keys, there’s no evidence that the vice president determines the outcome in any way.

Remember, you probably do like me, when George H.W. Bush picked Dan Quayle, a lot of the conventional pundits said, “Oh my God, this is going to sink his campaign.” Quayle suffered the worst humiliation in any debate, presidential or vice presidential, when he compared himself to JFK. And Lloyd Benson said, “Sir, I knew John Kennedy. “John Kennedy was my friend. “And you, sir, are no John Kennedy.” Didn’t stop Bush from winning in a near landslide. And you know, when the two Bubbas were picked, the critics said, “Why are you picking Gore, who’s just a duplicate who adds nothing?” Didn’t stop Bill Clinton from winning.

Yeah. So let’s get down to some brass tacks here. Let’s go back and imagine that Biden has not stepped aside, that he is the candidate. And so what were your 13 keys saying when Biden was running?

Yeah, when Biden was running, they secured the incumbency key and the party contest key, ‘cause 87% of Democratic primary voters voted for him. That means of the remaining 11 keys, six would have to fall to predict his defeat.

So what I was saying at the time was, while a lot could still go wrong, a lot would have to happen to go wrong to predict a Biden defeat. Now, this says nothing about his physical or mental health. I’m not a physician. And I saw the shameful exercise among Democrats, who are not physicians either. And of course, we’ve never examined Joe Biden making all these outlandish statements about his mental and physical fitness. It was a shameful exercise. Whatever the result was of Democrats publicly trashing so viciously their own incumbent president and the nominee, not by Adam Schiff or Jamie Raskin or any member of Congress, but by the Democratic voters.

So despite his performance in the debate, despite the polling, despite all of the other indicators around this election, which had everybody on the Democratic side completely freaking out, your model still predicted that Joe Biden was going to win.

Absolutely not. So many people have put words in my mouth and it really angers me because I’ve been misinterpreted time and time again, just as you just did. I never ever said I’m predicting Biden to win.

I have said time and again, I’ve made no final prediction, but a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose. And I need to make that crystal clear because I have been misinterpreted so many times.

Okay, good. Thank you for clarifying that. So at the point …

Now, having clarified that, let me add, we don’t govern by polls. If we govern by polls, Donald Trump should have dropped out in 2016. Barack Obama should have dropped out after his disastrous first debate with Mitt Romney when the polls shifted 12 points against him. George H.W. Bush should have dropped out when he fell 17 points behind Mike Dukakis in June and July of the election year. And Harry Truman should have dropped out when every single poll found that he was losing to Tom Dewey. And of course, all of those four candidates won. And it is utterly irresponsible, utterly anti-democratic, as well as foolhardy in terms of the outcome of elections to try to govern by polls.

Excellent. That’s a great point, and I appreciate you making it.

Thank you.

All right, so now the vice presidential pick doesn’t make a big difference. We now have Kamala Harris ascending to the candidacy once Joe Biden stepped aside. So as of today, I understand this is not a prediction.

Good.

As of today, what does your model show about the 13 keys for Kamala Harris?

That is an absolutely fair question, and I will answer it very specifically. One of the reasons I was so appalled by what the Democrats were doing is I thought they were engaged, as Democrats often do, in a self-fulfilling, self-defeating prophecy. I thought they were pushing for Biden to step out and then have a big party brawl to decide who the successor would be. And that would have been disaster, as I argued at the time. No incumbent party has ever been reelected when they lose both the incumbency key and the party contest key. But Democrats somehow drew a spine and got smart and united behind Harris, so they avoided losing the contest key.

So that means from Biden to Harris only cost the Democrats one key, and that is the incumbency key. So right now, on my system, the Democrats are down three keys: the mandate key because of midterm losses in US House elections, incumbency, and as we discussed, incumbent charisma.

So three more keys now would have to fall to predict their defeat. And I haven’t made final calls on the following four keys, three of which would have to fall to predict the Democrats’ defeat. Certainly that could happen, but not likely. That’s why I’ve continued to say the same thing that I said before Biden stepped down. A lot would have to go wrong. It could, but a lot would have to go wrong for the Democrats to lose.

So your viewers should focus on third party. Will RFK Jr. stabilize at 10% or more in the polls? I think it’s not likely. Social unrest, we saw some sporadic social unrest, but to turn the key, it has to be massive social unrest that threatens the stability of the country. Will that emerge at the Democratic Convention like we saw in 1968? Possible, but not likely. Then the two shakiest keys of foreign/military failure and foreign/military success. Although I’m waiting and seeing whether the hostage release has legs and lasts as a foreign military success.

So those are the four keys that one should look at. All the rest are pretty well locked in place.

So let me ask about the foreign piece. Let’s assume, and it terrifies me to say this, but let’s assume that the Middle East situation becomes much worse and the Hezbollah, Hamas, Israel, Lebanon now, all of that turns into some sort of regional conflict and the United States is somewhat in the middle of it. What does that do to the keys?

That would obviously be — aside from the human tragedy, which is what we should focus on — politically, that would be very bad for the Democrats. It would certainly lock into place the foreign/military failure key. And quite possibly have reverberating effects on social unrest in the United States. That’s one of the things certainly that could go wrong. But by itself, would it be enough to topple three keys? The devil is always in the details, which is why I’m always loathe to answer hypotheticals.

Gotcha, gotcha. Before we wrap up, is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I haven’t asked you about?

Yes, I want to step outside the keys for a moment, if I may, and talk about the aftermath of the near assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

There was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy and empathy for Trump after that. It could have been a pivotal moment for Donald Trump to really, as he said he wanted to do, really become much more of a unifying kind of candidate and not continue to pursue his divisive approach and inflammatory approach to politics.

And he blew it. First 25 minutes of his convention speech seemed to be right on and seemed to be following the theme of a new Trump. And then for the next 60 plus minutes, he reverted right back to the old Trump. Dark, sinister, negative, inflammatory rhetoric. A litany of lies, fact checkers noted at least 20 lies. There was the old, divisive, inflammatory Trump.

Then he had another opportunity when he went before the black journalist group. He was trying to reach out to black people and he blew it again. He gave us one of the most racist displays I’ve ever seen from a presidential candidate in recent years. This white guy trying to define the racial identity of a person in color. Leave aside the fact that he totally lied. Of course, she had long identified as a black person. She went to Howard University. You know, the flagship historically black university. She pledged to a black sorority. You know, I can go on and on. But the point is, here’s this old white guy defining the racial identity of a person of color. This hearkens right back to the disgraceful era of Jim Crow discrimination, when white people were defining the racial identity, white supremacists, of black people.

You know, your neighbor Virginia had this one drop rule. If you had one drop of black blood, you were black and you were segregated and you were subject to all kinds of discrimination. And here again, you know, harking right back to that disgraceful episode of history, is Donald Trump trying to define the racial identity of a person of color. Utterly shameful. Aside from the fact that he seems to have no idea that so many Americans have mixed identity and can identify both as an Asian American and a black American.

And then he blows it again with his misogynist attack on her gender. You know, basically saying, because she’s a woman, she’s not gonna be able to stand up to foreign leaders. Yeah, tell that the Golda Meir in Israel or Margaret Thatcher in the UK.

So aside from the keys, I really thought Donald Trump had a chance to really pivot in a very positive way. And he just hasn’t changed. He’s been the same since he came down that escalator back in 2015.

It’s been amazing to me. There’s a term that I use sometimes in both leadership and in parenting, which is SDBs, self-defeating behavior.

Yes.

When people do things to basically shoot themselves in the foot. And it’s often, you know, it goes back to their self-image and all sorts of things. But yes, I agree with you. I think that he had a chance and he blew it. We shall see. We shall see what happens.

Let me say a few final … I have a live show. If you wanna follow the keys and how I’m defining them in my political analysis, I have a live show every Tuesday and Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern time. And you can find it at Alan Lichtman YouTube. That’s A-L-L-A-N-L-I-C-H-T-M-A-N YouTube. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 p.m. Eastern.

I wanna also mention my latest book is out, “The Keys to Predicting the Next President 2024.”

But I wanna close with telling your audience what it actually takes to be a successful forecaster. You gotta know history, but that ain’t it. You gotta know politics, but that ain’t it. You gotta know math, but that ain’t it. The most important thing is keeping your own political personal views out of it. That may sound easy, but it’s incredibly difficult. Whether it’s the keys to the White House or any other political model, you will be useless as a forecaster if you let your own political views influence it.

And I’ve trained as an historian for many years to try to learn to be objective in my analysis, regardless of what my own political views might be. As you recall, my first prediction was Ronald Reagan. 2016, I predicted Trump. I’ve predicted about as many Republican and Democratic victories over the last 40 years. So basically what I’ve succeeded in doing is making the entire country really, really mad at me after 40 years in the prediction business.

I will put a link to your new book. I will put a link to your YouTube show in the show notes, and I will put the 13 keys in the show notes as well.

Dr. Alan Lichtman, thank you so much for being with us and keep predicting, and we will follow your model all the way up through election day.

Great, and check back with me after I do make my final prediction.I will, we will. Thank you so much.

Take care, Bruce.

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