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November 8, 2024

Dog ate my homework: Allan Lichtman offers his excuses for failing to foresee Trump's big victory

By Monica Showalter

As callings for Trump rolled in early Wednesday, plenty of conservatives were looking for laughs from leftists broadcasting themselves bawling about the result for all the world to behold.

I was laughing at this tweet from RealClearPolitics founder Tom Bevan:

Lichtman is a bright academic prognosticator, but boy, was he insufferable during this election, claiming he had 'science' of some kind to forecast the election for Kamala Harris.

He says it's unnecessary to rely on polls or other indicators for presidential predictions, because all one needed to do was look at his system of 13 "keys," meaning, checkboxes of conditions on the ground, in a methodology that sort of resembles how Chinese astrology is done.

Lichtman had been right in the past but with all the media attention he got for it, he seemed to have lost his touch, reaching Peak Allan instead of a correct prediction. He badmouthed RealClearPolitics which has a poll of polls, as well as pollsters in general because he insisted he was always right. He got into a scrap with Nate Silver, who makes predictions of his own, a long extended one on Twitter, insisting that Nate's forecast for a Trump victory was utter nonsense.

Now he's eating crow, and his excuses are something else.

According to USA Today:

"I feel like it's been a year since Tuesday," Lichtman said on a YouTube livestream Thursday evening hosted by his son, Samuel Lichtman. "I admit I was wrong. I called a Harris win and she didn't win. But I was far from the only forecaster that was wrong. Most other models were wrong."

Lichtman shared the two major reasons his "13 Keys to the White House" prediction system failed this year, including disdain for the Biden-Harris administration and Harris' delayed campaign start after Biden dropped out of the election on July 21. He added that Harris being the only nominee in modern history to avoid participating in primaries and caucuses was also a factor despite Democrats "doing the best they could."

So it's O.K. because the other guys were doing it? That does not sound like an advertisement for his 'keys' method.

His second excuse was not on the keys at all, the irregular and undemocratic way in which Harris was chosen to be the nominee. Once again, not an ad for the keys.

But here's where he got into absurdityville:

I don't think I called any (keys) wrong," Lichtman said. "The contest key was rendered problematic by what went on by the Democratic Party but I don't think you can say I called it wrong except for in retrospect. At the time it was the more reasonable call."

Not wrong, except in retrospect? How else is it possible to be wrong?

His claim that he didn't think he called his keys wrong are exactly where the problem was, it's what the big scrap with Nate Silver was about:


Notice how in the arguments he threw at Silver, he stated that since Nate was not a political scientist, nor a historian, he couldn't possibly be right. He actually called Silver "a clerk." Silver, of course, is an expert at odds and betting markets, and not surprisingly, he was on his game, having polished it a lot over the last few elections.

 

 

He was also right in stating what the problem was -- that Lichtman couldn't read his own keys.

Here is Lichtman's "13 Keys to the White House" definition, according to USA Today:

  • 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.
  • Key 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.
  • Key 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.
  • Key 4 (Third party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
  • Key 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
  • Key 6 (Long-term economy): Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
  • Key 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
  • Key 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
  • Key 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
  • Key 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
  • Key 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
  • Key 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
  • Key 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

Media reports said that Lichtman checked off eight of the 13 keys in Harris's favor. I recall in previous interviews, he actually said that the Biden administration had no major scandals:

But on Party Mandate, Incumbency, Third Party, Short Term Economy, Long Term Economy, Scandal, Foreign/Military Failure, and Challenger Charisma, -- eight keys -- surely Kamala came out behind, the answer was 'no' on all of those. Had he read his keys like most Americans did, he might have made a decent prediction.

As for his insults at others, well, certain pollsters do it right, and certain pollsters do it wrong, and the right ones -- such as Rasmussen, TIPP, and a new one called AtlasIntel -- are the ones worth following, as are the betting operations. We are delighted that American Thinker had such good accurate results in its collaboration with Rasmussen.

As for Allan, well, he can eat crow now and go back and try to master his own keys. Had he not been so biased for the swamp and in love with media attention, he might have read them right.

Image: Pexels // Pexels License

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