The factors he had going for him when his polls were good are still there
In response to an overwhelming trickle of inquiries, the time has come to report that, yes, the Lichtman "keys to the presidency" still show George W. Bush winning the election.
If you know what the above paragraph means, you can skip the following paragraph, and maybe this whole column, little of which is new. But most people probably don't know.
The Lichtman keys are 13 factors that, taken as a whole, predict the winner of the popular vote (not necessarily the electoral college). Professor Allan J. Lichtman (The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House, 1996), of American University in Washington, D.C., has applied the keys to every presidential election since 1984, always getting the prediction right, though there's some dispute about 1992. The keys can also be applied retroactively to any other election in the history of the current two-party system; again, they always turn out right. Most of the keys are about how the country is doing in the election year (as to the economy, international affairs and social peace) or how the incumbent is doing (at enacting programs, avoiding scandal, avoiding internal party divisions, and gaining support in midterm elections). The keys will be wrong someday. Still, no other predictive scheme has anything like this level of power. For more details, see Lichtman's books or contact the e-mail address or phone number below.
At the turn of this year, a headline on this column read "Bush has won 2004 election." But President George W. Bush was up in the polls at the time, so a prediction of his victory was not an attention-getter.
Now, however, the polls have flipped. That seems to matter to some people. It shouldn't.
Pre-convention polls are junk. The last time the Democrats were challenging a Republican regime - in 1992 - the Democrats ran behind in the polls almost consistently up until convention time, then won the election. The time before that, in 1988, they ran way ahead in the polls almost consistently before the conventions, then lost.
Pre-convention polls reflect the way headlines are breaking early in the year. Election outcomes reflect not the way headlines are breaking in October and November, but the country's underlying circumstances.
Nothing has changed in those circumstances in the past two months. They favor Bush.
He gets nine of the Lichtman keys. He only needs eight to win.
Specifically, he benefits from the fact that his party is stronger in Congress than it was four years ago, from breezing to renomination unopposed, from being the incumbent, from being spared a major third-party challenge (given that Ralph Nader can only hurt the Democrats, if that), from having an election-year economy that is not in recession, from having been spared major social unrest and major scandal (meaning high-level figures going to jail, or impeachment or something of that size), from having achieved a major foreign policy success (Afghanistan), and from facing an opponent who is not charismatic.
He is hurt by having presided over an economy that has not grown overall as fast as it did under his predecessor, by not having achieved a major change in the nation's direction (other than the one that was forced upon him by 9/11), by not being exceptionally charismatic himself, and by having presided over a major setback in the international realm (9/11).
That last key throws some people. By most accounts, 9/11 helped Bush politically, by rallying the country around a wartime leader. His poll ratings went through the roof for awhile there. Nevertheless, eventually what the public judges is how things are going. And major attacks on this nation do not count in a president's favor (Pearl Harbor also counted against Franklin Roosevelt), at least until they are counteracted.
Some people wonder why the current mess in Iraq wouldn't count against Bush, as a major foreign setback, given that the keys do include a foreign-failure category. Well, for one thing, the Iraq situation is murky, replete with both good news (the capture of Saddam Hussein, for example) and bad news. For another, there's only one key for foreign setbacks, and that has already been turned against Bush by 9/11.
Some people always want to talk about what Lichtman leaves out, or to argue about how his various "keys" should be turned in any given election. What's important to understand, though, is that he is not grinding any political ax. He is just trying to get the prediction right. He is a liberal Democrat whose system predicted the victory of Ronald Reagan in 1984 (pretty much making the prediction in 1982, when Reagan was looking weak) and of George H.W. Bush in 1988, when Democrat Michael Dukakis had been riding higher for much longer than John Kerry has been this year.
The making of predictions can be approached as a fun game. But it's more. When the poll numbers do start to move, you will be told by the purveyors of mainstream, pre-Lichtman analysis that it's because the Bush side has so much money, or because John Kerry is too liberal or too aloof or patrician, or because the Bush side has succeeded in selling a caricature of him.
No. The Lichtman scheme applies whether Kerry is liberal or conservative, lovable or aloof, and whether the Bush side is rolling in money or not. What matters is not such trivia, but whether the country thinks it and the government are doing about as well as can reasonably be expected.
In response to an overwhelming trickle of inquiries, the time has come to report that, yes, the Lichtman "keys to the presidency" still show George W. Bush winning the election.
If you know what the above paragraph means, you can skip the following paragraph, and maybe this whole column, little of which is new. But most people probably don't know.
The Lichtman keys are 13 factors that, taken as a whole, predict the winner of the popular vote (not necessarily the electoral college). Professor Allan J. Lichtman (The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House, 1996), of American University in Washington, D.C., has applied the keys to every presidential election since 1984, always getting the prediction right, though there's some dispute about 1992. The keys can also be applied retroactively to any other election in the history of the current two-party system; again, they always turn out right. Most of the keys are about how the country is doing in the election year (as to the economy, international affairs and social peace) or how the incumbent is doing (at enacting programs, avoiding scandal, avoiding internal party divisions, and gaining support in midterm elections). The keys will be wrong someday. Still, no other predictive scheme has anything like this level of power. For more details, see Lichtman's books or contact the e-mail address or phone number below.
At the turn of this year, a headline on this column read "Bush has won 2004 election." But President George W. Bush was up in the polls at the time, so a prediction of his victory was not an attention-getter.
Now, however, the polls have flipped. That seems to matter to some people. It shouldn't.
Pre-convention polls are junk. The last time the Democrats were challenging a Republican regime - in 1992 - the Democrats ran behind in the polls almost consistently up until convention time, then won the election. The time before that, in 1988, they ran way ahead in the polls almost consistently before the conventions, then lost.
Pre-convention polls reflect the way headlines are breaking early in the year. Election outcomes reflect not the way headlines are breaking in October and November, but the country's underlying circumstances.
Nothing has changed in those circumstances in the past two months. They favor Bush.
He gets nine of the Lichtman keys. He only needs eight to win.
Specifically, he benefits from the fact that his party is stronger in Congress than it was four years ago, from breezing to renomination unopposed, from being the incumbent, from being spared a major third-party challenge (given that Ralph Nader can only hurt the Democrats, if that), from having an election-year economy that is not in recession, from having been spared major social unrest and major scandal (meaning high-level figures going to jail, or impeachment or something of that size), from having achieved a major foreign policy success (Afghanistan), and from facing an opponent who is not charismatic.
He is hurt by having presided over an economy that has not grown overall as fast as it did under his predecessor, by not having achieved a major change in the nation's direction (other than the one that was forced upon him by 9/11), by not being exceptionally charismatic himself, and by having presided over a major setback in the international realm (9/11).
That last key throws some people. By most accounts, 9/11 helped Bush politically, by rallying the country around a wartime leader. His poll ratings went through the roof for awhile there. Nevertheless, eventually what the public judges is how things are going. And major attacks on this nation do not count in a president's favor (Pearl Harbor also counted against Franklin Roosevelt), at least until they are counteracted.
Some people wonder why the current mess in Iraq wouldn't count against Bush, as a major foreign setback, given that the keys do include a foreign-failure category. Well, for one thing, the Iraq situation is murky, replete with both good news (the capture of Saddam Hussein, for example) and bad news. For another, there's only one key for foreign setbacks, and that has already been turned against Bush by 9/11.
Some people always want to talk about what Lichtman leaves out, or to argue about how his various "keys" should be turned in any given election. What's important to understand, though, is that he is not grinding any political ax. He is just trying to get the prediction right. He is a liberal Democrat whose system predicted the victory of Ronald Reagan in 1984 (pretty much making the prediction in 1982, when Reagan was looking weak) and of George H.W. Bush in 1988, when Democrat Michael Dukakis had been riding higher for much longer than John Kerry has been this year.
The making of predictions can be approached as a fun game. But it's more. When the poll numbers do start to move, you will be told by the purveyors of mainstream, pre-Lichtman analysis that it's because the Bush side has so much money, or because John Kerry is too liberal or too aloof or patrician, or because the Bush side has succeeded in selling a caricature of him.
No. The Lichtman scheme applies whether Kerry is liberal or conservative, lovable or aloof, and whether the Bush side is rolling in money or not. What matters is not such trivia, but whether the country thinks it and the government are doing about as well as can reasonably be expected.