Allan Lichtman: The 13 Keys to the White House ... Why the Democrats will take back the White House

[Mr. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and the author of The Keys to the White House (1996).]

The election for president is more than a year away. Neither major party has as yet chosen a nominee. Yet the results of the 2008 election are already in: the Democrats will recapture the White House next fall, whether they nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. Only an unprecedented cataclysmic change in American politics during the next year could salvage Republican hopes.

This good news for Democrats and grim news for Republicans comes from the “Keys to the White House,” a historically based prediction system that I developed in 1981, in collaboration with Volodia Keilis-Borok, an authority on the mathematics of prediction models.

The Keys retrospectively accurately account for the popular vote winners of every presidential election from 1860 through 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2004. The keys model predicted George W. Bush’s reelection in April 2003.

The Keys show that elections are not horse races in which candidates surge ahead or fall behind on the campaign trail, with pollsters keeping score. Rather, a pragmatic American electorate chooses a president according to 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. Nothing that a candidate has said or done during a campaign, when the public discounts everything as political, has changed his prospects at the polls. Debates, advertising, television appearances, news coverage, and campaign strategies — the usual grist for the punditry mills — count for virtually nothing on Election Day.

The Keys include 13 diagnostic questions that are stated as propositions that favor reelection of the incumbent party. (See table below.) When five or fewer of these propositions are false or turned against the party holding the White House, that party wins another term in office. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins.

Even without counting a single economic key against the incumbent Republicans, they currently have a seven key deficit, one more than necessary to predict their defeat in 2008.

The following Keys currently count against the incumbent party.

The party’s losses in the 2006 midterm elections topple Mandate Key 1.

The battle to replace George W. Bush costs the party Contest Key 2.

Bush’s inability to run again in 2008 dooms Incumbency Key 3.

The lack of a second-term policy revolution forfeits Policy Change Key 7.

The disaster in Iraq costs the administration both Foreign/Military Success Key 9 and Failure Key 10.

No GOP candidate equals the charisma of Ronald Reagan or the heroic stature of Dwight Eisenhower, toppling Charisma/National Hero Key 12.

The following three Keys currently favor the incumbent Republican Party.

The absence of social upheavals comparable to the 1960’s, avoids the loss of Social Unrest Key 8.

The failure of scandals to impact the president directly keeps Scandal Key 9 from falling against the GOP.

The Democratic challenger is unlikely to match the charisma of Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, keeping the Challenger Charisma/Hero Key 13 in line for the incumbents.

The following Keys are uncertain:

Third Party Key 4 depends on whether New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who switched from Republican to independent, chooses to run an insurgent campaign for president.

Short-Term Economy Key 5 and Long-Term Economy Key 6 depend upon uncertain economic forecasts for the upcoming year.

Two caveats are in order. First, as a nationally based system, the Keys predict only the popular vote. In the last hundred years, however, the popular and Electoral College votes have diverged only in the 2000 election. For the special circumstances of that election, see, Lichtman, “What Really Happened in Florida’s 2000 Presidential Election,” Journal of Legal Studies 32(1), 2003). Second, the Democrats may well introduce an element of uncertainly by making a path-breaking nomination of either a woman, Hillary Clinton, or an African-American, Barack Obama. The keys, however, are a robust system that has endured through momentous changes in the electorate, the economy, the society, and the technology of elections. It is unlikely that any contingency will alter the negative verdict on the party in power.

The verdict of the Keys for 2008 does not depend on the particular candidate nominated by either party. So my advice to Republicans and Democrats alike in the primary elections is to vote for the candidate you believe in for 2008 and forget the misleading pursuit of the false grail of so-called “electability.”

Summary of the 13 Keys as of September 2007:

The Keys are stated to favor the reelection of the incumbent party. When five or fewer are false, the incumbent party wins. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins.

KEY 1 (Party Mandate): After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections. (FALSE)

KEY 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination. (FALSE)

KEY 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president. (FALSE)

KEY 4 (Third party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign. (UNCERTAIN)

KEY 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. (UNCERTAIN)

KEY 6 (Long-term economy): Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. (UNCERTAIN)

KEY 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. (FALSE)

KEY 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term. (TRUE)

KEY 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. (TRUE)

KEY 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (FALSE)

KEY 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (FALSE)

KEY 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (FALSE)

KEY 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (TRUE)

Results: TRUE: 3 KEYS; FALSE: 7 KEYS; UNCERTAIN: 3 KEYS
Prediction: INCUMBENT REPUBLICANS LOSE POPULAR VOTE