Monday, December 16, 2019

The Keys to The White House 2020...


Who will win the White House in 2020?  Let us see what the Keys to White House tell us....  Allan Lichtman developed a method for determining who will win  the presidency in his book, The Keys to the White House.

According to the Wikipedia summary-

  "The  Keys are based on the theory that that presidential election results turn primarily on the performance of the party controlling the White House and that campaigning by challenging or incumbent-party candidates will have no impact on results. According to this theory, a pragmatic American electorate chooses a president based on 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."


So basically whatever candidates do has little effect.  The result will be the same.

The Keys are statements that favor the re election of the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party wins. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins.  I scored here whether or not they were True or False..
  1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. FALSE , Republicans lost in the House 
  2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. TRUE, Trump has no viable opposition.
  3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. TRUE, Trump is an incumbent,
  4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.  TRUE
  5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. FALSE
  6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. FALSE  Growth did exceed the previous terms till recently, but it is now dropping badly 
  7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.  FALSE
  8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. FALSE.
  9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. FALSE, Trump was impeached
  10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. TRUE
  11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.  FALSE.
  12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. TRUE is liked by  his base. 
  13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. TRUE... Joe Biden  is not a national hero...
So that's how I scored it....Seven FALSE Things for President Trump. According to this model  TRUMP will  lose.  However, some of the keys are tossup.   According to Lichtmann himself, the election is still to close to call .
The model most  times is pretty clear cut.. The model  explained  why George W. Bush got reelected in 2004, and why his father, George H.W.Bush did not get reelected in 1992. Indeed the formula has predicted the popular vote for every election since 1860.

Here is an article talking about the author's feel about 2020.

https://nypost.com/2019/12/07/professor-renowned-for-predicting-elections-says-2020-too-close-to-call/

Here's a link to article in the New York Times that has more discussion of the Keys.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/despite-keys-obama-is-no-lock/