Keys to the White House - April 2023 Prediction

[Pringles]

I know @vcczar did this a while back before the 2022 Midterms, I'm personally a huge fan of this method, and the mastermind behind it: The Great Professor Alan Lichtman. 

With that said, I'm going to list how I feel about the 13 Keys for the 2024 election, and feel free to comment, do your own, or critique. There may be some I might be conflicted on. 

This is assuming Donald Trump is the 2024 GOP nominee, which looks more true with every passing day. 

My Final Tally: 

True - 9

False - 4

Biden has 9/13 keys to the White House. 

 

 Midterm gains: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. False - Though Democrats did outperform and gained Senate/Gubernatorial seats. 

 No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. (Robert F Kennedy Jr and Marianne Williamson are probably the two most unserious challengers Biden could get. RFK Jr. might start off with some signs of support, but all Democrat operatives have to do is show him hanging out with Roger Stone and other MAGA extremists, and he'll be toast.) All in all: True - no serious primary challenge. 

  Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. Obviously True. 

 No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. Bit of predicting the future here, but I don't see a third-party challenge as significant as we saw in the 2016 election which is where I'd make this false. Thus - True

 Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. Hard to say given our country cannot agree, nor discuss rationally what a recession is. While inflation is extremely damaging to our country, and Biden's approval ratings, I do not believe it qualifies as the kind of actual recession we're talking here. So: True. (Things could very well change though, however, they are not necessarily showing major signs of that so far, and yes, I'm betting against the constant doomsaying/repetition by some economists who said a recession was going to occur last year, now later this year. We'll just see)

 Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. True  - A quick 3 AM Google search and the graph speaks for itself. Biden (thus far) is on track to have on average better GDP growth than Trump, and Obama, on average.) This can still change, but we're going with true for now. 

 Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. True - Biden's first term will likely go down as the most successful legislative period in the last decade. 

 No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. False - But conflicted... protests occurring in State Capitols around the country, along with the constant threat of another MAGA attack as they defend their beloved Trump from constant legal troubles, all in all just political polarization. At any rate, nothing compared to 2020-early 2021. Still bad though. 

 No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. Conflicted - I doubt Hunter Biden and whatever the House GOP tries to do (which they are already expected to try) and find some wrongdoing on Biden and/or his family, will be important to the voters. I will consider this True for now, as Biden hasn't been impeached or faced nearly the amount of scandals Trump has. 

 No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. False - Afghanistan is the biggest foreign policy disaster in the last decade without a doubt. 

 Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. True - Despite the Republican base turning on the issue of Ukraine's conflict with Russia, most Americans and perhaps half of Republicans at this point still support aiding Ukraine. This is a largely bipartisan issue proven time and time again, and Biden recently visited Ukraine, all in all, it's countering the worst foreign policy instances in the last decade with now one of the best. 

 Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. False - I don't need to elaborate much on this one. Biden is old and cannot speak like he could 10-20 years ago, and he's definitely not seen as a national hero. 

 Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. True - Donald Trump, despite a charismatic God to his following is not to the rest of the country, and probably 60% of the country considers him a national villain. Not a chance in Hell this one is false. 

[MrPotatoTed]

Honestly, I’ve always found the keys to be too arbitrary to be useful, especially as they’re actually meant to be a retroactive review rather than predictive.

For example, you marked all the economic factors as positive, and I understand why, but I don’t know anyone who is happy with the economy right now.  Massive layoffs, bank failures, inflation through the roof.  That’s not to say Trump would do it better of course.  

[Pringles]

7 minutes ago, MrPotatoTed said:

Honestly, I’ve always found the keys to be too arbitrary to be useful, especially as they’re actually meant to be a retroactive review rather than predictive.

For example, you marked all the economic factors as positive, and I understand why, but I don’t know anyone who is happy with the economy right now.  Massive layoffs, bank failures, inflation through the roof.  That’s not to say Trump would do it better of course.  

Certainly an agreeable criticism of it. I sometimes wonder if I should trust Alan Lichtman more than the actual method. Since the maker, who has been right for every election since 1984 knows how to assign the keys better than anyone haha, but he himself perhaps isn’t only relying on this.

And yeah, I did recognize that short term economy could go to false. Either way it seems Biden has a clear advantage, even with some of the conflicted keys. Hopefully by 2024 we’re in a better spot.

[vcczar]

2 hours ago, Pringles said:

Certainly an agreeable criticism of it. I sometimes wonder if I should trust Alan Lichtman more than the actual method. Since the maker, who has been right for every election since 1984 knows how to assign the keys better than anyone haha, but he himself perhaps isn’t only relying on this.

And yeah, I did recognize that short term economy could go to false. Either way it seems Biden has a clear advantage, even with some of the conflicted keys. Hopefully by 2024 we’re in a better spot.

I don’t have much time to elaborate, but he seems to treat his method as an infallible soothsayer, according to how he responds in interviews. Part of this is because he has to be a true believer to get the book sales. Fewer people would buy something that’s only helpful to determining elections. He also got 2000 wrong but then argued that it only predicts the popular vote. So there is some backtracking. I think I could come up with a better method that would incorporate a lot of what he does. No thing can be a fool proof predictor. We can only hope to make it less flawed. 

[Pringles]

47 minutes ago, vcczar said:

He also got 2000 wrong but then argued that it only predicts the popular vote. So there is some backtracking.

This is true, since then to my knowledge he now basically ignores the popular vote. Still, anybody that can predict these elections from 1984-2020 and just get one slightly wrong is pretty damn good in my book. 

[vcczar]

8 minutes ago, Pringles said:

This is true, since then to my knowledge he now basically ignores the popular vote. Still, anybody that can predict these elections from 1984-2020 and just get one slightly wrong is pretty damn good in my book. 

If you think about it though, which elections weren’t obvious? 2000 was probably the only clear unknown. All except, 2016 had a more likely winner. 2016 is the only election in which the more likely winner lost. 2000 is probably the only tossup. 2004, 2012, 2020 were elections that would have been more shocking if they went for the other guy. 

[Pringles]

6 minutes ago, vcczar said:

If you think about it though, which elections weren’t obvious? 2000 was probably the only clear unknown. All except, 2016 had a more likely winner. 2016 is the only election in which the more likely winner lost. 2000 is probably the only tossup. 2004, 2012, 2020 were elections that would have been more shocking if they went for the other guy. 

2000, 2004, 2016, it just depends on different points in the campaign season. You could argue 2012 as well. 

2004 was close until the final month or so, still ended up being basically down to one state by election night. 

Making these kinds of predictions early enough is what makes it interesting, now at what point they should be made? I'm not sure. With polls becoming more meaningless in the modern day I feel like this is starting to feel like a better checklist of who is more likely to win, rather than relying on GE polls which show Biden down right now, and I imagine those polls will still continue the trend as they did in 2022 of being wrong. 2020 polls were "wrong" in a numbers sense, but they consistently showed Biden winning in the national popular vote, and in other key states. Ex: Biden lead almost every Wisconsin poll, the average was like 6, he won the state but the margin was less than 1%.  

 

[vcczar]

I followed 2004 and 2012 closely and those elections never seemed like the other person would win, at least not in average polling. In fact, I even did research in 2004 to see what % of the student vote needed to come out to win OHio for Kerry based on polling. I found he needed 98% turnout at the rate he had to carry him over the line. He needed Ohio to win. The only thing predicting Romney defeating Obama was Anthony’s 2012 game, which consistently had Obama losing. It was obvious it would be a closer election but a Democrat wasn’t sweating once the general election occurred. There were bad news cycles but they were never the permanent sort. Three good Romney days. All it took was one good Obama day to rise him back up. Obama had the advantage and momentum. 2016 was the most nonsensical election. I remember when Trump was picking up PA (before I moved here. I was in TX.) I was saying, “this doesn’t make sense” about hundred times. Same with MI. Yeah 1984-2020 is mostly easy predictions, even making the predictions at the convention. 2000 is the only tossup. 2016 is the only one that defied all the odds. 2020 was really easy on Election Day. I predicted the election completely except for ME-2, which had few polls. 

[Edouard]

The point about 2000 to be honest will forever be unknown. At 300 votes close and democrats picking wrong systems to vote and recount we will never be sure that Florida was not going to Al Gore.

I would disagree with social unrest but remain waiting for Ukraine to see if they can pull a major victory in the year to come. Afghanistan compared to Ukraine actually is brutal.

When 350 000 afghan forces with 20 years of military equipment flee in front of 70 000 talibans while 300 000 ukrainians holded to the least 150 000 to 200 000 russians in the war theater considering that about 750 000 russians already fought in Ukraine and that they were only prepared and equiped from 7 years, not even mostly by the US as France has been the first military partner of Ukrainian equipment BEFORE the war breaks, we can see that the failure of Aghanistan was also the failure of a state that was too weak to keep up. Ukraine is the best example why Biden was actually right to say most of Afghan troops did not want to preserve their republic unlike ukrainians.

[MrPotatoTed]

I honestly don’t think most people remember Afghanistan at all right now, other than veterans of the war and extreme political junkies like us.  It hasn’t been in the news in years, and will be even less relevant a year from now.  I’m sure whoever the Republican is will bring it up, but it’s not like Trump is taken seriously on foreign/military issues anyway.