Monique Nelson:
What are we here tonight? We are here to welcome the Predicting the Next President with Allan Lichtman, Class of 1967. Thank you so much for joining. My name is Monique Nelson, and I am a proud board member of Board of Trustees for Brandeis. And I would love to welcome you guys to this very timely discussion this evening.
Monique Nelson:
Before we get started, I just have a few housekeeping items. This webinar is being recorded, and will be available on the Brandeis website on-demand library in a few weeks. So, you can always come back and share this. And we'd love to hear from you during the session, please feel free to send questions through the Q&A box. And if you see, the Q&A box is at the top. It says Q&A. And if you could please put them in there, that would be awesome. Please note, we'll try to answer as many questions as we can. But as you can imagine, this is a full house tonight, we have well over... We have over 1000 people joining us this evening, so may or may not be able to get to every question, but we're going to work really hard to get to most of them.
Monique Nelson:
But without any further ado, I am delighted to introduce Allan Lichtman, a proud graduate of Brandeis, Class of 1967; one of the most important entries of his very impressive resume.
Monique Nelson:
A few highlights: after Brandeis, Allan received his PhD from Harvard University in 1973, with a specialty in modern American History and Quantitative Methods. He became an Assistant Professor in History at American University in 1973, and a full Professor in 1980. And as a distinguished professor in 2011. He was the recipient of the Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 1992 and 1993. He has authored 11 books and hundreds of scholarly popular articles. He has lectured in the US and internationally, and provided commentary for major US and foreign networks and leading newspapers, magazines across the world. His book, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, was a finalist for the National Critics Circle Award on nonfiction. His co-authored book with Richard Breittman, FDR and the Jews, won the National Jewish Book Award prize in American-Jewish history, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize in history. His book, The Case for Impeachment, was a National Independent Bookstore best seller.
Monique Nelson:
Allan's prediction system, The Keys to the White House, has correctly predicted the outcomes of all US presidential elections since 1984. He was listed as rise.global at number five among 100 most influential geopolitical experts in the world, and received the lifetime achievement award from who's who. Please join me in welcoming Allan, and let's get right to it. Thanks so much, Allan. Looking forward to your comments.
Allan Lichtman:
Thank you very much. And believe me, I did not write that introduction. Now, as you heard, I have been successfully predicting the results of American presidential elections for nigh on 40 years. And you may think that's a wonderful, prestigious thing to do. But I got to be honest with you, all I succeed in doing, is every four years making half of the American people really, really mad at me. And having been doing this for 40 years, all of the American people are really, really mad at me. And as you can imagine, predicting Donald Trump's win in 2016 did not make me very popular in 90% plus democratic Washington, D.C., Where I teach at American University. And probably did not make me, especially popular among my Brandeis classmates and other alums. But I soldier on, and I have to tell you, there is a Brandeis story behind this; how I became to be an historian who does political prediction. I did not enter Brandeis with the intent of going into history.
Allan Lichtman:
Now, I was a stereotype. I was going to be, my son, the Jewish doctor, MD, typed up. I majored in bio, took the med boards, was all set to go to medical school. And then I realized three things, I don't particularly like being around sick people, I faint at the sight of blood, and I'm really clumsy in the laboratory. So I'm thinking, maybe medicine is not the correct profession for me.
Allan Lichtman:
So I walked into the dean's office, Dean Scan. Some of the from the 1960s may remember him, a terrific guy. And I said, "Dean Scan, I'm dropping out of the pre-med program." He said, "You can't. You've finished it." Here I am 19 years old and I said, "Well, wait a minute. It's my life, yes, I can." But he said, "No one's ever done that before." I said, "I don't care. It's my life." He said, "What are you going to do instead of going to medical school?" I said, "I am going to history grad school." Dean scan, took a look at me, got this really funny expression on his face and he said, "Lichtman, you're crazy. No one could imagine giving up medical school for history, grad school."
Allan Lichtman:
In fact, I kept trying to convince my parents, please, it's just another kind of doctor. But that they weren't buying it for one moment. But because I had all the science background, I became a historian who specializes in quantitative methodology, using mathematical models to understand trends and patterns in the political history of the United States. And I'll explain in a moment how that got me to The Keys to the White House, my prediction system. But because I'm still a professor, I got to have a pop quiz. But you don't have to answer it. I already know the answer for all of you. How many of you have read, seen or heard anything about this year's presidential election?
Allan Lichtman:
I know you all have. Well, take all that material, and do with it what the great British philosopher, David Hume said; you should do with works of superstition, confine it all to the flames. It simply misleads you in understanding and predicting elections. Because all the polling, all the conventional punditry is not based on an understanding of how elections really work. And that is the basic insight behind The Keys to the White House, that presidential elections are essentially votes up or down on the strength and performance of the party holding the White House. In other words, my friends, remarkably, it is governance not campaigning that counts in the end. All of the tricks of the campaign, the ads, the speeches, the debates, the polls, the punditry, in the end count for absolutely nothing when it comes to understanding and predicting American presidential elections, which is why I've often been able to predict elections years ahead of time, because my system is based on the dynamics of elections.
Allan Lichtman:
And it's very positive for the American voter, for you, the electorate, members of the electorate. It says, you're not fooled by the sound bites, by the dirty tricks, by the attack ads. You make a very pragmatic decision about whether or not the party holding the White House has governed well enough to get another four years in office. Now as a proud Brandeis grad, I'd love to tell you all. It's an example, that I came up with The keys to the White House by long and deep and brilliant contemplation. But if I were to tell you that, to quote the late and not so great, Richard Nixon, that would be wrong. I came across The Keys to the White House totally by accident.
Allan Lichtman:
In 1981, I was a distinguished visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. And of course, what you do when you're a distinguished visitor at such a renowned institution of brilliant physics and math? You go to Quiz Show. And I spent a lot of my time on Tic-Tac-Dough with Wink Martindale. Beat 20 opponents, won four cars and won over $100,000 in cash in crisis, which sounds great until you meet the taxman. But that's not the story. And if you're interested, I will tell you the whole story about going on a quiz show.
Allan Lichtman:
But I did have a little bit of time for something else. And I did meet another gentleman, whose name was Vladimir Keilis-Borok, the world's leading authority in earthquake prediction, head of the Institute of Pattern Recognition and Earthquake Prediction in Moscow. And when two strangers meet and you are academics, you ask, what do you do? And I explained the basis of my work in quantity of history. And he said, "Oh, I do the same thing." And I said, "No, you don't. You're a geophysicist, you do earthquakes. It couldn't be more different." I said, "No, no, I do same thing. You study mathematically patterns in human systems, I study mathematically patterns in the systems of the earth."
Allan Lichtman:
I said, "That's nice, nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you." "Goodbye." And he says, "Wait." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "You and I are going to collaborate." And of course, being smart and foresightful my answer was, "Absolutely not. Earthquakes may be a big deal here in Southern California. But I have to go back to Washington, DC. Nobody cares about earthquakes there." He said, "No, no, you misunderstand. I've already solved earthquakes... yeah right." He said, "I don't want to collaborate on earthquakes." Now get this, Keilis-Borok was a member of the Soviet Scientific Delegation that came to Washington under President Kennedy in 1963, the year I entered Brandeis, and negotiated the most important treaty in the history of the world, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which stopped us from poisoning our atmosphere, our oceans and our soil.
Allan Lichtman:
He said, "I fell in love with politics, and I always wanted to use the methods of earthquake prediction to predict elections." But he said, "I have a problem, I live in the Soviet Union. Elections, forget it. It's a supreme leader go off with your head. But you're an expert in quantitative history and an expert in the presidency, together, we could really collaborate." At this point I thought the guy may be KGB back when there was a KGB, but I'm an historian and I write about dead people. I have nothing to hide." So, we collaborated. And our key insight was this, we reconceptualized presidential elections. Remember, this is 1981, not as Carter versus Reagan, not as liberal versus conservative, not as Republican versus Democrat. But in geophysical earthquake terms, as stability, the party holding the White House keeps the White House, and earthquake, the party holding the White House loses.
Allan Lichtman:
And we looked at every American presidential election, from the horse and buggy days of politics in 1860, when Lincoln was elected up to the modern era of Carter versus Reagan in 1980. And we were guided by my insight that we wanted to look at, what factors related to the strength and performance of the party holding the White House. And using Keilis-Boroks method of pattern recognition, we were able to separate out the patterns associated with stability and earthquake. And that gave us these 13 key questions, which are simple, true/false questions, where an answer of false always goes against the party holding the White House. For example, our short term economy question is, the economy is not in recession during the election year. If that's false, that obviously hurts the party holding the White House.
Allan Lichtman:
The methodology also yielded a simple decision, if any six of the questions were false, that is if there were any six negative keys, it didn't matter which. It's a purely nonlinear unweighted system, you have earthquake, the party holding the White House is turned out. Fewer than six, you have stability. And this pattern held over enormous changes in our society, our economy, our demography, and our politics.
Allan Lichtman:
Now, you got a couple of academics. And what do academics do when they make a big discovery like that? Well, you publish it in an academic journal, we actually expect five or six readers to actually look at it. Well, it turned out seven people read our article, and the seventh person was the Associated Press Science reporter. And I'm sitting in my office in the Winter of 1982, and I opened up my newspaper, remember, I'm still a young, naïve professor, and I see this article, it says, Odd Couple Discovers Keys to the White House. It wasn't Felix and Oscar. It had to be the Soviet Geophysicist and the US historian. And I'm thinking, wow, I'm in the paper. Maybe I can go pop with this.
Allan Lichtman:
So I send this to Jack Limpert, the Editor-in-Chief of the Washingtonian Magazine. Limpert takes one look at it, sees its math, and sends it on to a supposed junior editor, a guy named Ken Diselle, a Southerner. Diselle calls me and he says "Lichtman, I did not understand one word of that article you wrote with the Crazy Russian guy. But are you telling me... Remember, this is in early 1982... That you can predict who is going to be the next president of the United States?" And I'm thinking, do I give them the proper academic answer or probability, caveats, error margins. And I knew if I did that, my pop career would be over in 10 seconds. So I said, "Yes, I can." And that led to my first prediction based on the 13 keys, and the six-key decision. And keep in mind here as we get to this, that the keys gauge the big picture of incumbent, strength and performance.
Allan Lichtman:
They don't look at the polls, they don't pay attention to the pundits, they don't look at who's up or down on a day-to-day basis. They don't look at the ads, the fundraising, the tricks of the campaign, the speeches, the debates. They look at things like the fundamentals, midterm election results, third parties, whether the city president is running, internal party contests for the party holding the White House, short and long term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, foreign policy successes and failures. And only two keys have anything to do with the candidates, and they are extremely highest threshold keys.
Allan Lichtman:
They ask whether the incumbent party candidate is one of these once in a generation broadly inspirational, charismatic candidates who brings in lots of folks from the other side. And they ask whether the challenging party candidate is not one of those once in a generation inspirational candidate. So we are really looking at the big picture, things that don't change very easily. So I wrote my article in the April 1982 Washingtonian called, How to Bet in '84, in which I predicted Ronald Reagan's re-election in the midst of what was then the worst recession since the Great Depression, when Reagan's approval ratings were no better than Jimmy Carter's, a one-term president at a comparable point in his incompetence. Well, this attracted some attention.
Allan Lichtman:
I get another call from another southerner. And the gentleman says, "Professor Lichtman, this is Lee Atwater calling, Political Director of the Ronald Reagan White House. We want you to come to the White House." And I said, "You sure you got the right guy kind of like George McGovern?" He says, "We know who you are." "Okay." Of course, I go to the White House, and Lee's a history buff and he wants to talk about Kennedy versus Nixon, or Harry Truman supposed come from behind victory. And introduces me to all the big shots, the cabinet, the Vice President, the whole crew. But none of that was the reason why he brought me to the White House. We all know who Lee Atwater was. He was Karl Rove before there was a Karl Rove. And compared to Atwater, Karl Rove looked like a kindergarten teacher. Atwater was the master of dirty politics. He very sadly died young in his 40s, and recanted all of his dirty tricks on his deathbed. But he is the real reason Atwater, a practical pal brings me to the White House.
Allan Lichtman:
He looks me in the eye and he says, "What would happen, Professor Lichtman if Ronald Reagan didn't run again in 1984?" A perfectly reasonable question for a guy in the 70s. And I'm thinking the damage, no, no. We give it to you straight Mr Atwater. Right now you're down three keys, sure win, you have to be down six, and there's no way three more keys are going to turn. But look what happens if Ronald Reagan doesn't run again. You obviously lose the sitting president key, that's four. You lose the party contest key because Bush, and Kemp, and Robertson and all those guys will fight like crazy. That's five. And without the Gipper, you lose the incumbent charisma key. George Bush, charismatic. Come on. He's about as exciting as a Passaic shopping center on a Sunday morning.
Allan Lichtman:
Atwater looks me in the eye, breathes a huge sigh of relief and says, "Thank you so much, Professor Lichtman." And the rest is history. By the way, Lee Atwater and I were in absolutely opposite ends of the political spectrum. By the way, when I was at Brandeis in the 60s, I was a Robert Kennedy Democrat, which put me way on the right wing. If you weren't some kind of Maoist or Trotskyite, you were a crazy right winger. Still a Robert Kennedy Democrat, which of course now puts me in the broader society on the left wing. But Atwater and I became good friends. He invited me to George HW Bush's inauguration. I mentioned in his biography, bad boy. The keys played a role in presidential politics once more.
Allan Lichtman:
You may recall, after the Gulf War in 1991, George HW Bush hit what was essentially record approval of about 90%. And every Democrat, worth their salt was tumbling over every other democrat to get out of the race. Mario Cuomo, Dick Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, A Gore, none of them wanted to face George HW Bush in 1992. Well, at that time, I published the first edition of my book. It's now in its seventh or eighth edition. I encourage you to get it. It's easy to find on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2020. Well, this was The Keys to the White House way back for 1992. It's written in 1991.
Allan Lichtman:
And I wrote based on the keys, "Bush is a Carter, not a Reagan or one-term president." Did any of the big shots listen? Of course, not. They never do, and I'll explain why at the end of my talk, when I talk about some of the deeper meanings of the keys. But someone did listen. My path seems to have been crossed with Southerners. I don't know why being a good Jewish boy from Brooklyn, but that's the way it was. Another southerner calls me and she says, "This is Kay Goss calling from Little Rock, Arkansas, special assistant to Governor Bill Clinton down here." Then a voice gets kind of deep and the southern accent seems to disappear and she says, "Lichtman, are you serious that George Bush can be beaten in 1992?" I said, "Yes, I am." I sent Bill Clinton a copy of my book, and a memo. And the rest is history. So either way, you got somebody to be mad at me about him.
Allan Lichtman:
By the way, I was supposed to get Bill Clinton's personal copy of my book, which he kept. Not in the Oval Office, but in the inner office with all the annotations that Bill Clinton was a reader put down. But you may recall, the transition in 2001 was a little bit shaky, and someone stole my book. So if you see it out there, you tell them, it belongs to Professor Lichtman. And they should send it to me.
Allan Lichtman:
Now, one of the great things about the keys that I've pointed out to you is because they deal with the underlying dynamics of elections, not with polls, and punditry and day to day events. You can often predict elections way in advance. I predicted '84 in April of '82. I predicted George HW Bush's win in 1988, in May of that year, when he was 17 points behind his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis. So, who infamous Willie Horton and the other dirty tricks had absolutely nothing to do with Bush's. When he was running on the Reagan record, which was a very strong one. I predicted 2004, and early 2003. I predicted 2008 in April 2006. In fact, I said the keys were so strongly falling into place against another Republican term, that the democrats could nominate a name out of the phone book and elect that person present.
Allan Lichtman:
Now, of course, that's kind of what they did. Who had heard of Barack Obama back then? And I predicted the very hard to call 2012 election in January 2010. I could already see the keys lining up in favor of Obama's re-election. And that elicited, by the way, a scathing attack from Nate Silver, a published attack. He wrote a long thing, and I wrote a response. And he said, "It's impossible to call elections that early." And my response was, "Yeah, using your methods, which are based on polls, it's utterly impossible. But if you're tapping into the dynamics of elections, it can be done." Well, ultimately, he came around to my point of view of predicting an Obama win. And I wrote to him, and I said, "Let's do a joint article explaining how using totally different methods we came to the same answer." No response.
Allan Lichtman:
And remember, pretty late, the polls were showing a Romney win, but I stuck to my guns. But sometimes the keys don't fall into place until much later. And that is the case this year, where now I'm going to get to my prediction for 2020 and how I arrived at it.
Allan Lichtman:
As of late 2019, less than a year to go before the election, President Donald Trump was down only four keys. That's two key short of predicting his defeat. But then as we know, everything changed in America in 2020. We were hit with the worst pandemic in 100 years, by far, one that's still going on, regardless of what Donald Trump may be telling you. And of course, with the cries for social and racial justice. Well, after my call for Donald Trump in 2016, I got this very interesting note from the president elect, "Congrats, Professor, good call." And in big Sharpie letters signed, Donald J. Trump.
Allan Lichtman:
So Trump acknowledged my prediction in 2016, but he did not understand the deeper meaning of the keys. Which is that it's governing, not campaigning that counts. And when you are the sitting president, you are judged by your record. As Herbert Hoover, the guy who presided over the Great Depression, a guy who should know once said, "As President, you get credit for the sunshine, and blame for the rain." Well, it's raining really hard in America, and here's what happened. Rather than subsequently dealing with these issues, which would have greatly helped his reelection. Instead, he reverted to his 2016 playbook when he was a challenger, and thought he could talk his way out of the problems facing America and his administration. It didn't work out at all for him. The result was he lost three additional keys.
Allan Lichtman:
The short term economic key, which is measured by the existence of an election year recession, which we've been in for some time. A long term economy key, because the sharply negative growth has pulled down his long term average so far. And of course, the social unrest key because of what is raging across the land. So Trump goes from four keys down, two key shot of defeat, to seven keys down; one more than is necessary to predict his defeat. Now, and he is the greatest master of scene of distraction and deflection. And he's tried to deflect this off on everybody, whether it's China, or Barack Obama, or the Democrats in Congress. But remember, he is the president, and he gets uniquely the blame for the rain.
Allan Lichtman:
So my final prediction for this year is that Donald Trump will become the first sitting president, since Bill Clinton beat George HW Bush in 1992 to lose in reelection bid. We're over, my friends, something remarkable here. Never in the history of the United States has the party holding the White House suffered such a sudden, and dramatic reversal of fortune in just a matter of a few months. It's absolutely never happened before.
Allan Lichtman:
Now, few comments in closing the last 10 minutes or so, about some of the deeper meaning of the keys. As you may have noticed, some of the keys require judgment. Some of them are cut and dry, like midterm election results. So, whether this is a sitting president. But others like charisma, or scandal require some degree of judgment. And when I first came out with the keys, I was blasted by the Professional Forecasters because I had committed the sin of subjectivity. And even though I'm Jewish, I'm going to confess, I am a sinner. I did commit that sin, but not really. It's not subjectivity. It is judgment. And I tried to convince the Professional Forecasters that when you're dealing with human systems, something we historians know real well, you can't eliminate judgment. You can't reduce human behavior to an equation. Those who try have failed. And I said, moreover, while you may have your own opinion, it's not a random judgment. Any judgment you make for the system has to be done within the parameters of the system. And when you buy my book, you'll see each key is very carefully defined.
Allan Lichtman:
Like I said, the charisma key, they have to be the once in a generation, broadly inspirational candidate who brings in members of the opposition. You can't just appeal to a narrow slice of the electorate, which is why neither last time nor this time, do I give Trump the charisma key. The other thing that constrains it is, I've answered all these questions since 1860, and you have to be consistent with how you've answered it. So a lot of people have said, well, the UAE-Bahrain-Israel Treaty, surely that flips in Trump's favor foreign policy success key. And I say no, read the definition. It doesn't fit. Look how I've answered previous questions. I've only counted one treaty since I've been predicting elections, just flipping that key. And that's the monumental Nuclear Arms Control Treaty between the US and the Soviets during the second Ronald Reagan term.
Allan Lichtman:
I didn't count the 1994 treaty between Israel and Jordan. Jordan is a far more important country than Bahrain and UAE. I didn't count the Iran nuclear accords, I didn't count the Paris Climate accord. So clearly, this doesn't fit. And also to do with my definition, it really hasn't made a ripple in the United States. One of the republicans devote a couple of sentences to it, and 10-plus hours of their convention, and it's been totally drowned out of the headlines.
Allan Lichtman:
So I made these arguments. Not obviously about this treaty, but about the need for judgment and how the judgment is constrained. It took well, more than 20 years. But by the early 21st century, the professional forecasters had seen the light. And they realized, a very successful way of forecasting is to do like the keys do, combined quantitative and judgmental measures. That's more accurate than trying to reduce human behavior just to an equation. And suddenly, the keys were the hottest thing in forecasting. I twice forecasted the International Summit on Forecasting. A special issue of the Journal of Applied Forecasting was devoted to my system. I've made presentations at the American Political Science Association. Even though I'm not a political scientist, I've published in all the forecasting journals. So my friends, save your bell bottoms, you never know what might come back in to style again.
Allan Lichtman:
Finally, I want to talk a little bit about the deeper meaning of the keys, and how the keys could fundamentally change politics in the United States. Many of you know of course, and some of us even remember, the great Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address in 1961, when he warned about a military-industrial complex. This has nothing to do with Trump's attacking his generals, as opposed to these... This had to do with the structure of American society. And the military-industrial complex is sustained by what we call an Iron Triangle, one point on the triangle of the military contractors who make huge money, obviously from the government. Now, the point is the congressmen and senators who want military contracts in their states and districts.
Allan Lichtman:
And then the third point is the military itself that wants all this weaponry. To this day, we really have not broken the grip of the military-industrial complex. And while Trump may demean his generals, he may call war heroes who are dead losers and suckers, he is at the center of the military-industrial complex. He's always bragging about how he's thrown all this money at the military. How he sold all this military hardware around the world, which from my point of view, just contributes to more deaths and more destruction. But the main point here is that there is a political-industrial complex, and it has its own Iron Triangle. And that Iron Triangle, one point is the consultants, the admin, the handlers, who make huge amounts of money on the notion that elections are decided day-to-day by campaigns.
Allan Lichtman:
Nothing against these people. They're all good friends of mine. This is structural. In fact, one of my best friends who is my college debate coach at Brandeis in the 1960s is Robert Shrum, who for decades was the leading democratic consultant. And when I first developed the keys, I sent them to Shrum. He calls me back a couple of days later and he said, "Lichtman, I hate the keys. Go back, find your nutty Russian guy, redo them and come up with something I can manipulate." Cheese don't work that way. Second problem, of course, is the media, which makes its money covering elections day by day. Again, the media and the journalists are my friends. This is structural. The media can't just say, "Lichtman predicts a Biden win, see you in three months." It doesn't work that way.
Allan Lichtman:
And then the fourth... The third point on the triangle is the candidates, who are afraid to go against the media, the consultants, the admin, and the handlers. I have been raging for 40 years to try to break the Iron Triangle. But it's so deeply embedded in the structure of our politics that they don't listen. And I tried to explain to them how this alternative system, which doesn't depend on any of those things has so accurately predicted elections, and they won't listen.
Allan Lichtman:
Before I get to my final point, I want to share with you what it takes to be a good forecaster, particularly when you're dealing with some judgemental questions. You got to know history, although that ain't it. Got to know math. Well, that ain't it. Got to know politics, although that ain't it. The most important thing, and being a good forecaster is putting aside your own political preferences. If you don't do that, you are absolutely worthless as a forecaster, and you can be wrong about half the time. I've always tried to tell people these are endorsements. Excuse me, they're not endorsements, they are predictions. And going into this year, I've called four republicans and five Democrats, and that's as even handed mathematically as you can get in nine different calls.
Allan Lichtman:
Now, if in fact, we could somehow break through on this Iron Triangle of the political-industrial complex, we could have a whole new kind of politics in this country. I call it campaigning by the keys. And it would free us from the shallow, negative soundbite-driven campaigns that we see today, instead of following the conventional model, which has never been successful. By every conventional measure, Hillary Clinton should have won the landslide. She won all three debates. According to the scientific poll, she had a better organization, she had more money, she had more ads, she had more experience. Why did she lose? Because 2016, according to my prediction was a change election, any generic Republican was going to beat any generic Democrat. And by the way, that prediction came before the infamous Comey letter about reopening the email investigations, which according to a lot of conventional thinkers like Nate Silver was the thing that sunk the Clinton campaign. My prediction came well before that in September, of 2016.
Allan Lichtman:
So if conventional campaigning doesn't work, and what really matters is governing, then the insight here is that candidates should campaign to build a mandate to govern. They should tell us what bills they're going to introduce in their first 100 days, what executive orders they're going to issue. The kind of people they're going to put in the White House, the cabinet, and yes, on the Supreme Court. I couldn't disagree more with Joe Biden, when he says it's inappropriate to indicate some of the people you've put in the court. I think it's highly appropriate for the American people to know that, as well as to know all these other things about governing.
Allan Lichtman:
Give us your vision for governing, give us the specific things you are going to do, if and when you become president. That would be good for the country, because it would help us to get things done. And it would be good for the candidate and her or his party, because if you govern well, that means whether you're eligible or not for re-election, your party is much more likely to win the next election. That is, we're much more likely to have stability, rather than earthquake. And if we can't pin on the basis of governing rather than all of these attacks and ginning up your base, then maybe, maybe, maybe we'll also, at least to some extent, alleviate the extreme polarization that marks our politics today. And by the way, this polarization is not unique. We had worse polarization in the 1850s, led to the Civil War.
Allan Lichtman:
In the 1930s Republican said, Franklin Roosevelt was both a fascist and a communist, as if you could be both combined. That he was really a closet Jew and his real name was Rosenberg. FDR actually had a great response to that. He said, "I don't really care much where we lived and my distant ancestors were, as long as they were good and honest people. That's what matters to me." And we got through all those previous periods of polarization. In the 1950s, we didn't so much of polarization all on party lines. But after Brown versus Board of Education, we had enormous polarization over the issue of retaining Jim Crow in the south. Virtually, every Southern officeholder signed the southern Manifesto, challenging the Brown versus Board of Education, and trying to preserve Jim Crow. So on an optimistic note, we shouldn't despair. As polarized as we are, it is possible although not guaranteed to transcend that.
Allan Lichtman:
I will close with a quotation attributed to Abraham Lincoln. A lot of quotations are attributed ti him anyway, and well said, said it's in character. The quotation is, "The best way to predict your future is to choose." And how do you choose this year? Overcome all the barriers, all the rhetoric all the bombast, and vote, that's your future. Thank you so much. I'd be happy to take any and all questions. Don't ask me about the opera, and we will get along just fine.
Monique Nelson:
Thank you, Allan.
Allan Lichtman:
Thank you.
Monique Nelson:
All right. So we have a ton of questions as you could imagine. But what we would love to start with, could you just go over the 13 keys? Just go through them, if you could...
Allan Lichtman:
...Stand now or just list them?
Monique Nelson:
You can list them and give... If you can give a brief readthrough...
Allan Lichtman:
Sure.
Monique Nelson:
That would be awesome.
Allan Lichtman:
Key one, party mandate based on midterm election results. That is false. Republicans took a pasting. Key two, contest. True, no serious contest for Trump's re-nomination. Key three, incumbency. True, he's the sitting president. Key four, third party. No significant third party. They got to be polling at, at least 10% under my system.
Allan Lichtman:
So on the first four keys, Trumps, that only one, but then we get to some others. Short term economy. False, there is a recession. Long term economy, key six, false because of the sharp negative growth. Policy change, true, mostly through executive order. But also through his big tax cuts, Trump has fundamentally changed policies of the Obama year, most particularly in the area of taxes, immigration, and the environment. Key eight, social unrest, false, as I've already explained. Key nine, my favorite key, the scandal key. As only the third president to be impeached by the full house, Trump probably will lose with this scandal. Keep in mind all the other scandals. I turned the key against Bill Clinton's Democratic Party for 2000 when he was impeached, and he was impeached for a much less serious offense, in trying to rig an election covering up a consensual affair.
Allan Lichtman:
Key 10, foreign military failure. I count that as true, although it's pretty shaky. Key 11, for reasons I explained, foreign military success. I count that as false. Key 12, incumbent charisma. I've explained, you have to be this once in a generation, broadly inspirational candidate like Ronald Reagan, who brought in all those Reagan Democrats. Well, Trump's a great showman. He's got great flash. You saw the note he wrote to me, but he appeals to a very narrow slice of the electorate. His strong approval rating is somewhere between 25 and 30%. Over 60% of Americans don't like him, and don't think he's honest and trustworthy. And he hasn't brought in any Trump Democrats. Democrats are 95% against him. So, the incumbent charisma key is false.
Allan Lichtman:
The challenger charisma key is true. Well, Biden is not a John F. Kennedy, or a Franklin Roosevelt. He's an experienced guy. He's an empathetic guy, but he's not the once in a generation inspirational kind of candidates. So that's how we get to our seven falses.and my prediction of a Trump defeat, the falses are key one, party mandate. Key five, short term economy. Key six, long term economy. Key eight, social unrest. Key nine, scandal. Key 11, foreign military success. Key 12, incumbent charisma.
Monique Nelson:
Awesome. Thank you so much for that.
Allan Lichtman:
Not bad for an old guy, huh?
Monique Nelson:
Not bad. Not bad. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the overview. So now we're going to get right into the hundreds of questions that have come in, but...
Allan Lichtman:
I'll answer as many as I can.
Monique Nelson:
I've grouped a few. There's some key themes here. So, a lot of folks want to understand electoral versus popular vote. And most certainly with the 2016 election, can we talk a little bit about the keys, how that affects that discrepancy?
Allan Lichtman:
That's probably the most important question anyone can ask. When I first developed the keys in 1981, this wasn't an issue. You had to go all the way back to 1888, very different politics for the popular vote and the electoral college vote, to diverge. With that, we know it diverged in 2000. And that worried me, but it didn't worry me too much. Because 2004 was a Republican called, Republicans win the popular vote, they're going to win the electoral college anyway. 2008 and 2012 were such overwhelming Democratic calls for Obama that it didn't matter.
Allan Lichtman:
But going into 2010, it bothered me a lot. And starting in 2016, I began predicting only the winner because the political baseline had so fundamentally changed; models can't stay static, they have to adjust to changes, and I didn't change my keys. But I only called the winner in 2016, that's why I got that nice note from Donald Trump. And here's what's going on. Here's the changing political dynamics, when the framers set up the electoral college, and I have a lot to say about that, which I won't, the difference between the largest and smallest states in population was only about five to one, not a big deal. Today, it's almost 70 to one, and the Democrats automatically, essentially win five to six median popular votes from just two states. And we all know what they are, California and New York. Those extra votes are worthless in the Electoral College. They could win those states by 537 votes, like Trump won Florida in 2000, and still get all the electoral college votes. So, the baseline has shifted.
Allan Lichtman:
When I first started equivalence in the popular vote and equivalence in the electoral college vote were the baseline. But now, because of the imbalance in our country and the changing political demography, there's no longer that equilibrium. The Democrats will now win the popular vote, as they did in 2016 handily in any close election. So there was utterly no point anymore in predicting the popular vote. I only predict the winners of the election. But more broadly, forget about the keys, this is a huge flaw in our democracy. We no longer... Because we're stuck with an 18th century obsolete institution, we no longer have governing by the consent of the governed. Instead, we have a real probability of minority rule, which is also, of course abetted by Senate. So the smallest state, which has one, close to 170 F of the population has the same two senators as California. So kind of minority rule, which may have worked well in the 18th century, is built in to the 21st century.
Allan Lichtman:
It's a great thing to be the world's longest running democracy. But on the other hand, we're saddled with these obsolete 18th century institutions. I gave you a long answer. And the reason is, I do think that is the most important question.
Monique Nelson:
It is, and that was the one that came up probably the most often. So, thank you for that. And I'm sure we can speak all night about the Electoral College and whatnot.
Allan Lichtman:
I could teach a whole class on the Electoral College, but let's get to other questions.
Monique Nelson:
Let's get to some of the other questions here. The other popular ones, so now with RBG, rest in peace, what do you believe that will do to the election?
Allan Lichtman:
Sure. I've been asked that. Obviously, I've been asked that question a lot in the last few days. And my answer is, to quote the great Zen saying, "Un-ask the question," it doesn't turn a key. Unless it turns a key, it has no impact on my system and that's why I'm never worried about October surprises, Because the keys are so high threshold and there's such big picture that even someone as brilliant as Bob Shrum can't manipulate them. And even Jared Kushner couldn't arrange a treaty big enough to turn the foreign policy success key.
Allan Lichtman:
Now, let me stand outside the keys, which I don't normally do, and just give you a conventional political answer. At first blush, you would think this might help Trump because if Trump is good at anything, he is the master of deflection and distraction. And anything to distract from over 200,000 tragic deaths. And Trump keeps commenting on it like it's a huge success, and he doesn't care that all these people died. And he certainly doesn't care that they died in a blue state like my state of Maryland, but leave that aside. The most recent polling suggests it doesn't help Trump, that more people than not want Biden rather than Trump to pick the next Supreme Court nominee, perhaps realizing they want a little more balance on the court. And maybe they don't want someone on the court who's going to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and Roe versus Wade.
Allan Lichtman:
And although it was close, the poll also showed that the RBG opening 30% were more likely to vote for Biden, and 25% more likely to vote for Trump. And worse for Biden, it's a wash.
Monique Nelson:
Got it. Thank you. Thank you. So as we kind of keep moving forward on some of the keys, folks keep asking about, can you apply the keys to the Senate and down ballot races?
Allan Lichtman:
I tried that way back, I think it was in the 1990s. And think about it, one set of questions applied to all 50 states, not an easy thing to do. But I did develop the keys to the Senate, which by the way, who were oddly no resemblance to the keys to the White House. Totally different, and in some ways opposite. So a bad economy hurts the president, but it helps the sitting senator because the voters think, oh, things are bad. I want to put this guy back in because he's got a lot of clout. Fundraising doesn't matter for the presidency. It does matter for the Senate. So the biggest thing, I think I proved was presidential elections are unique. And I thought he did pretty well with the keys to the Senate. I had about 85 to 90% correct. I thought that was damn good for one set of questions to 50 states. But you can imagine what my critics focused on, the 10 to 15% that...
Monique Nelson:
That you got wrong.
Allan Lichtman:
That I got wrong. I don't do that anymore. Let me tell you one thing. I've been doing this for 40 years, I'm 73 years old. Go back to the class of '67 at Brandeis, an old dinosaur, no offense to anyone else from that class.
Monique Nelson:
You're classic. You're classic.
Allan Lichtman:
In fact, my American Political Science presentation was Classic Models of Elections. So I was explicitly recognized as an old class mate, but I did not know Abraham Lincoln. I can assure you that. And every time I do this, every four years, I still get butterflies in my stomach, even when I've been doing it for 40 years. Because unlike someone like Nate Silver, I have unequivocal predictions who's going to win. So Nate Silver, last time had something like a 72% probability of a Clinton win. And then when Trump wins, you just say, "I told you there was a probability that Trump was going to win." I don't have that out. And I know if I'm ever wrong, how many bricks are going to fall on my head. But you know what? One of the great things about going old, there's nothing anyone can do to you anymore.
Monique Nelson:
We're going to stay with that theme, thanks.
Allan Lichtman:
By the way, the other secret about growing old and growing old successfully, I'll share with you, regular aerobic exercise. I don't care what you do, it doesn't matter. Doing something is 80% better than doing nothing.
Monique Nelson:
No, absolutely. We'll take that one for sure. But we're going to stick with your prediction, and you've been right since 1984. But is this prediction final? Could it change?
Allan Lichtman:
No. Yeah. Well, something can happen that's never happened before; one of the candidates heaven forbid, should die, or we should be attacked by a foreign power. But short of something that unprecedented and that catastrophic. No, because the keys are the big picture. But I have to tell you, there were two things outside the realm of the keys that keep me awake at night, and they're a much more serious problem for our democracy than my prediction. One is voter suppression.
Allan Lichtman:
Look, the Republican base is old white guys like me. But you can't manufacture more old white guys. We're the most shrinking part of the electorate. You can't unfortunately, make us live to be 150. But what you can do is try to suppress the vote of the rising democratic base of minorities and young people. And we see Trump fiercely trying to discredit mail-in voting, an essential option in the middle of a pandemic, particularly a pandemic that hits people of color, much harder than white people in this country. We can see his guy at the post office messing up the mail. We can see his appointee William Barr injustice trying to act to suppress the vote. That's scary, because a democracy depends on a free, full and fair vote.
Allan Lichtman:
Other thing that keeps me up at night is Russian intervention. As much as Trump might want to deny it, the FBI Oles intelligence agency say the Russians are back, they're active, they're denigrating Biden, and they're supporting Trump. And we know already Trump is exploiting and welcoming Russian intervention, just as he did in 2016. To get the Mueller report, which was a disaster, look at the much better bipartisan report of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.
Monique Nelson:
Well, you actually answered three in one, because that was going to be my ...
Allan Lichtman:
Wow.
Monique Nelson:
... is awesome, so you clearly do this all the time.
Monique Nelson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So just to go back a little bit in time, I wanted to ask a little bit about the issues around governance for the Obama administration that led to Trump. What was, were those keys?
Allan Lichtman:
Republican takeover of the house, and then republican takeover of the Senate, which stymie of the Barack Obama agenda. When Barack Obama was president, the Grim Reaper, you all know who he is, Mitch McConnell, was very candid. He said, we are going to oppose everything that Obama puts out. We want him to be a one-term president. But of course, Democrats held the Congress for the first two years, which led to that huge triumph of the Affordable Care Act. Which by the way, get this, it's the only major piece of social legislation in the history of the country to be passed without a single member of the opposition party supporting. It didn't happen with Social Security, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the American with Disabilities, none of that. They all, at least had some bipartisan support.
Allan Lichtman:
But once the Democrats lost the House and in the Senate, Obama was not able to follow that up with a similar big, splashy domestic policy initiative for the second term.
Monique Nelson:
Thank you. Thank you so much. So, we only have a few more left. Actually, there were a lot of repeats here. And you've done an amazing job of covering off on most of them, but wanted to find out, how does... How is charisma operationalized? How is that charisma key operationalized?
Allan Lichtman:
Yeah. As I said, it does require some judgment, but here's how it's operationalized. Number one, I make it a very high threshold key. It doesn't mean that one candidate is more charismatic than the other. A lot of people misinterpret it that way. And you can have an opinion about that, and that's fine. But if you're going to put it in the context of the keys, you've got to put it according to my definition, which is the once in a generation, inspirational candidate who's able to attract crossover support. That's why neither Biden nor Trump qualify.
Allan Lichtman:
Second operationalization is, I've answered this question since 1860. And there's only a handful of candidates who fit. And I think you could probably name them as well as I can, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama in 2008. It's a very rarefied group, and it's not hard to recognize.
Monique Nelson:
Just a few more, Allan, if you could bear with us.
Allan Lichtman:
I'm good. I'm good.
Monique Nelson:
Has SCOTUS always been so partisan? What happened to three equal branches? What is not a court rather than a liberal or a conservative court?
Allan Lichtman:
Well, court has always been pretty partisan, although it ebbs and flows. Obviously, during the 1850s when we got the Dred Scott decision, and then during Reconstruction, the court was very partisan. It was quite partisan in the early 1930s, when a conservative court overturned two of the critical pillars of the New Deal, the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Recovery Act. The court turned less partisan, although somewhat liberal under justice Earl Warren. No one forgets Earl Warren was a Republican, appointed by a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, even though he was critical in the Brown versus Board of Education decision, and during school desegregation, victims rights... Excuse me... The rights of the accused, and of course, the landmark one person, one vote decisions.
Allan Lichtman:
But just like our politics has become more partisan in the last four years, it was nothing, probably in the history of the US Supreme Court that was more partisan than Mitch McConnell holding up the appointment of Merrick Garland, a moderate Chief Justice of the DC Court of Appeals, eminently qualified. And yet he said, because it's a democratic president, even though the election's eight to nine months away, we are not even going to hold this up to a vote. We have never ever seen anything like that before. And now of course, now the shoe is in the other foot, they've totally reversed it, and come up with all kinds of concocted hypocritical justifications for totally turning this around, even though we're now only a month and a half on the election, not eight to nine months.
Monique Nelson:
Right. Well, what's good for goose is not always good for gander, right?
Allan Lichtman:
Right. Like all partisan politics, Chief Justice Roberts has tried to say, there are no Republican judges, there are no Democratic judges. And for a time, that was true. One of the more liberal justices we've had was a David Souter, who was a Republican appointee. Or Whizzer White. That was his nickname, because he was a great football player. Or John Kennedy appointee, proved to be very conservative.
Monique Nelson:
Absolutely. Last two questions. I know we're running short on time, so we want to get these last two in.
Allan Lichtman:
I can take two more questions.
Monique Nelson:
You're awesome. What's changed over the last four years with respect to prediction?
Allan Lichtman:
Well, nothing really. It's the same system. What changed in 2016 was when I just predicted the winner, and didn't even read my September 2016 article. And by the way, that note from Donald Trump is on a copy of that Washington Post article where I made my prediction, I'm just talking about the victors. The biggest thing that's changed I mean, not just this year, is the relevance, the utter irrelevance of the popular book because of the political demographic imbalance that has grown in the United States. Even 2000 when it was a divergence, the lead in New York and California was only about 1.7 billion votes. Now, it's five to six million. It's just extraordinary. That's the biggest change in our politics in recent years.
Allan Lichtman:
What is unique about 2020, though, I'll mention it but I'll emphasize it again, is how dramatically and how suddenly, fortune was reversed for Donald Trump in just a matter of a few months. That's never happened before in the history of the country. And as Herbert Hoover said, "You're the president, you get the blame for the rain." You're the president, not Bob Woodward, and not Barack Obama, and not Hillary Clinton. Only you, Donald Trump.
Monique Nelson:
Last question, have you ever changed the keys? Have the keys always been the same?
Allan Lichtman:
At the very beginning, before I made a prediction, I made a slight modification. We moved from 12 to 13, a much better, uneven number, which was better for developing the decision. And that was done in 1981 before any prediction was made. The first prediction was based on exactly the same set of keys. Every four years, people say to me, got an African-American running, big change, the keys won't work. Got a woman running, big change, the keys won't work. Got social media, big change, the keys won't work. And my answer is the keys are an incredibly robust system. They go all the way back retrospectively to 1860, and have endured through vastly greater changes than that in our politics, our economics, our society, and our demography.
Allan Lichtman:
So, I haven't changed the keys at all. But I've explained in response to the changing political demography of the country, what I focus on now, as compared to what I focused on at an earlier time. And the basic lesson here is, although times change, the basic, pragmatic, rational decision making of the American people has not changed. And that should be a very optimistic and extremely positive message. But again, this all depends on a fair and full vote. Suppress to vote, and who knows what might happen.
Monique Nelson:
Absolutely. Allan, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I always look forward to your predictions. I love the keys. I wish we could use the keys everywhere but...
Allan Lichtman:
Hey, it's the world's only do-it-yourself prediction system where all these Brandeis alums can make their own calls.
Monique Nelson:
Exactly. Exactly. So I thank you so much for your time, your effort and spending it with us this evening. Thank you to everyone on the line. I hope this was as enjoyable for you as it was for me. And I wish you all the best. Please stay well and stay safe, and we will see you again soon Brandeis. Thanks so much for joining us. Goodnight.
Allan Lichtman:
Thanks for listening. I appreciate every one of you. Take care.