I found something that is very interesting about Allan Lichtman’s presidential prediction. I’ll make a thread below, for all of you electoral nerds:

Lichtman predicts the presidential election by having 13 different “keys” which exhibit traits. For each of the 13 keys, he gives a point to one respective candidate. Here are the 13 keys:

- Midterm Gains
- No Contest
- Incumbency
- No Third Party
- Strong Short Term Economy
- Strong Long Term Economy
- Major Policy Change
- No Scandal
- No Foreign/Military Failure
- Foreign/Military Success
- No Social Unrest
- Charismatic Incumbent
- Uncharismatic Challenger

In Biden’s favour:

- Midterms
- Short Term Economy
- Long Term Economy
- Social Unrest
- Scandal
- No Military Success
- Uncharismatic incumbent

In Trump’s favour:

- Primary
- Incumbency
- Third Party
- Policy Change
- No Foreign Failures
- Uncharismatic challenger

So what I find interesting about this is that I would disagree with one of these characterizations. In Lichtman’s reasoning as to why Trump is uncharismatic, he claims that it is because he only appeals to a narrow base.

However, it wasn’t Trump’s charisma that caused him to appeal to a narrow base. It was his past and his policies. I think there is a bit of a false conflation between charisma and the reason why Trump doesn’t have much reach to other groups.

However, what is even more interesting is that this wouldn’t have toggled with Allan’s result. He said that if SIX OR MORE factors are in Biden’s favour, he wins. Biden had 7; take away one attribute and he still wins.

But I am very amused by this difference in predictions. Norpoth predicted a Trump win using primary data. Many of these good forecasters will be wrong no matter who wins.