"Never wrong pundit" Allan Lichtman predicts Clinton win.

[Joe Biden is your president. Deal with it.]

This is from last month but thought it was pretty interesting since he's always right with his predictions.

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http://dailybruin.com/2016/08/15/experts-predict-clinton-win-during-hammer-museum-lecture-2/

[Devout Centrist]

52-44-4 sounds excellent.

[Ronnie]

Ah, damn, I should have gone to that event.  The Hammer Museum is a 5-minute drive from my house.

I wonder if Lichtman's estimation of a 52% Clinton win takes third parties into account.  I imagine not, but he doesn't make it immediately clear in that article.

[Frodo]

Combined with the increasing likelihood that Democrats will win the (albeit slim) majority in the Senate, this is very encouraging.

Now all we need is the House.     

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Litchman's model doesn't really fit this election, he can easily swing it either way to fit his preferred narrative. In the end, once the election has occurred, he'll just adjust things to preserve his model's so-called infallibility.

Key 1: The incumbent party (in this case, Democrats) holds more seats in the U. S. House of Representatives after the midterm election than after the preceding midterm election.
FALSE

Key 2: There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.
AMBIGIOUS - Was Sanders serious? Depends on whether you prefer the narrative of "Hillary Clinton had a consistent pledged delegate lead starting with the third contest" or "Hillary was supposed to win in a yuge landslide, but when the actual elections happened, she came within striking distance of losing a majority of non-territorial contests (referring just to state winners, not delegates) and didn't clinch the nomination until June."

Key 3: The incumbent-party candidate is the current president.
FALSE

Key 4: There is no significant third-party or independent candidacy.
Lichtmann defines "significant" as earning 5%. Stein won't do it, but it honestly looks like Johnson will as of now. That may change after the debates though. UNKNOWN

Key 5: The economy is not in recession during the campaign. TRUE

Key 6: Real (constant-dollar) per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth for the preceding two terms. TRUE

Key 7: The incumbent administration has effected major policy changes during the term. FALSE

Key 8: There has been no major social unrest during the term.
AMBIGUOUS. The whole police brutality/BLM movement might qualify. This is really open for Litchman to do whatever he needs to do to preserve his model.

Key 9: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
TRUE. Hillary isn't part of the administration anymore, so emails don't count here.

Key 10: There has been no major military or foreign policy failure during the term.
Barring any major development, TRUE

Key 11: There has been a major military or foreign policy success during the term.
AMBIGIOUS. The opening of Cuba relations and Iran deal should qualify, but Litchman has said in the past that he doesn't think Americans see this as a major success. Again, he'll just assign this as needed to preserve his model.

Key 12: The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or is a national hero.
FALSE.

Key 13: The challenger is not charismatic and is not a national hero.
AMBIGIOUS - Extremely open to interpretation. Does Charismatic mean your base is excited and turns out in big numbers for you, and you're a great orator, or does it mean you have high personal popularity? Completely up to the modeler.

4 FALSE
4 TRUE
1 Unknown
4 Ambiguous

Six "False" is required for the incumbent party to lose.

As you can see, there's plenty of room for Litchman to declare his model was correct no matter what occurs. If Trump wins, he'll just "deny deny deny" ever doing this interview and reallocate keys to get his model to predict a Trump win.
 

[Hermit For Peace]

I'll take a squeak-by election, just as long as Hillary clearly wins so that Trump can't call fraud or fixed election or some other such distortion.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Key 8: There has been no major social unrest during the term.
AMBIGUOUS. The whole police brutality/BLM movement might qualify. This is really open for Litchman to do whatever he needs to do to preserve his model.

LOL at comparing the non-violent BLM movement to the race riots and anti-war protests of 1968. That's what Lichtman means when he talks about major social unrest.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So basically he's fudging his model into the direction of what he expects to happen. Key 2 is actually true by his standard (Sanders won over a third of delegates) but he's finding excuses otherwise because he doesn't think Trump can win.

[SteveRogers]

Litchman's model doesn't really fit this any election, he can easily swing it either way to fit his preferred narrative. In the end, once the election has occurred, he'll just adjust things to preserve his model's so-called infallibility.

FTFY

[Maxwell]

wasn't there some "NEVER WRONG" model that predicted a Bernie Sanders vs. Jeb Bush election with Bernie winning like 442 EV's?

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

wasn't there some "NEVER WRONG" model that predicted a Bernie Sanders vs. Jeb Bush election with Bernie winning like 442 EV's?

[The Other Castro]

wasn't there some "NEVER WRONG" model that predicted a Bernie Sanders vs. Jeb Bush election with Bernie winning like 442 EV's?

You're saying that's not going to happen? Wow, shill.

[Trapsy]

lol this method is pretty flawed.

[ursulahx]

Can't find the link, but about six months ago Lichtman was arguing that the only ambiguous key was 'major foreign policy success'. He was unsure how major the deal with Iran was going to be. If that had been False, he would have been forced to predict a Trump victory (at the time, he seemed quite sure Key 2 counted as False). Obviously he figured predicting a Trump win, in the face of all other evidence, would open him up to humiliation.

I agree with many of the above comments, the '13 Keys' model is ridiculously subjective and suffers from the same flaw as many fundamentals-based models: just because you can find a set of factors common to all past elections does not mean the same factors will be valid for all future elections. Those familiar with the xkcd 'Electoral Precedent' cartoon will already know this...

[MT Treasurer]

This is about as reliable as Dick Morris' model.

[LLR]

Wow he took SUCH a deep dive.

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

I used to have a great deal of respect for Lichtman and Keys, but not sure I do now. Is he rigging the nomination contest key for Hillary? The criteria is very clear in the book and it's 2/3's of the delegates...Hillary only got 3/5's.

As for the foreign/military success, sorry but it has to be seen as a "success" across the political spectrum. The killing of OBL in Obama's first term counted, but the Iran nuclear deal is only seen through partisan lenses.

He's obviously rigging one of these keys.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Cool, that's the exact same prediction as I have not using any explicit model at all.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I used to have a great deal of respect for Lichtman and Keys, but not sure I do now. Is he rigging the nomination contest key for Hillary? The criteria is very clear in the book and it's 2/3's of the delegates...Hillary only got 3/5's.

As for the foreign/military success, sorry but it has to be seen as a "success" across the political spectrum. The killing of OBL in Obama's first term counted, but the Iran nuclear deal is only seen through partisan lenses.

He's obviously rigging one of these keys.

Yeah, there's no justifiable way to give Hillary credit for a big primary win.  Still, 7 to 6 is good for a win in his system, right?

No, 7 to 6 means the incumbent party loses. The incumbent party has to get to 8 keys.

[Figueira]

wasn't there some "NEVER WRONG" model that predicted a Bernie Sanders vs. Jeb Bush election with Bernie winning like 442 EV's?

You're saying that's not going to happen? Wow, shill.

#BernieOrBush

[muon2]

So basically he's fudging his model into the direction of what he expects to happen. Key 2 is actually true by his standard (Sanders won over a third of delegates) but he's finding excuses otherwise because he doesn't think Trump can win.

Both key 2 and key 4 are false for the incumbent by Lichtman's traditional standards. That would make six keys against Clinton and point to a Trump popular vote win (he doesn't predict EC wins).

Can't find the link, but about six months ago Lichtman was arguing that the only ambiguous key was 'major foreign policy success'. He was unsure how major the deal with Iran was going to be. If that had been False, he would have been forced to predict a Trump victory (at the time, he seemed quite sure Key 2 counted as False). Obviously he figured predicting a Trump win, in the face of all other evidence, would open him up to humiliation.

I agree with many of the above comments, the '13 Keys' model is ridiculously subjective and suffers from the same flaw as many fundamentals-based models: just because you can find a set of factors common to all past elections does not mean the same factors will be valid for all future elections. Those familiar with the xkcd 'Electoral Precedent' cartoon will already know this...

He also had the contest key as ambiguous then. He was fudging his traditional standards in that article to say that if Bernie was supportive at the convention his delegate total wouldn't count against the Dems holding the WH.

At that time he didn't see any traction for Johnson, so he had the third party key as True for Clinton. I don't see how he could make that call without some serious fudging of that key, too.

As noted he was ambiguous about the foreign policy success. In the article he even said that the best strategy for Clinton was to have Obama sell the Iran deal to the public at large. Clearly that hasn't happened, so if he were consistent he should be calling that key False for Clinton raising the False total to 7.

Here was his interview a year ago. In that one he thought the Climate Change agreement would turn the foreign policy success key. By May of this year he had discarded Climate Change as the vehicle and moved to Iran.

The real difference you can see is that he was toying with adding a new key. This one is for a challenging party fracture. In this election it would turn True, and if Johnson is interpreted as a challenger fracture instead of a true third party then Hillary gets 8 keys True even if contest and foreign policy success are ruled False.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This is about as reliable as Dick Morris' model.

Far less so. The Keys are so hazy as to be worthless. Dick Morris, on the other hand, is quite reliably wrong.

[Phony Moderate]

So basically he's fudging his model into the direction of what he expects to happen. Key 2 is actually true by his standard (Sanders won over a third of delegates) but he's finding excuses otherwise because he doesn't think Trump can win.

Yeah, I remember it being pointed out on here a few months ago that a Trump win was likely based on his model. Thing is that several of the 'keys' are vague.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

So basically he's fudging his model into the direction of what he expects to happen. Key 2 is actually true by his standard (Sanders won over a third of delegates) but he's finding excuses otherwise because he doesn't think Trump can win.

Yeah, I remember it being pointed out on here a few months ago that a Trump win was likely based on his model. Thing is that several of the 'keys' are vague.

If you try to assign the unclear keys with as little bias as possible, this is what you get.

Key 2: There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.
Based on what Litchman's standard was when he wrote his book, which is really what he should be using, FALSE


Key 4: There is no significant third-party or independent candidacy.
Based on current polling, we have to say FALSE (Johnson)

Key 8: There has been no major social unrest during the term.
Since BLM is (mostly) non-violent, we'll say TRUE here.

Key 11: There has been a major military or foreign policy success during the term.
It's a good point that Cuba/Iran are viewed through partisan lenses. The same applies to Climate Change. Litchman has been reluctant to declare any of these a clear success throughout the campaign. Going with FALSE.

Key 13: The challenger is not charismatic and is not a national hero.
Given what I did with the rest of the keys, this one doesn't matter, so I'll just be generous to Clinton and say TRUE

7 FALSE
6 TRUE
 

Trump is our next president, with one more key than he needed.
 

[Seriously?]

It's funny how these "never wrong" pundits are "never wrong" until they are.