"Never wrong pundit" Allan Lichtman predicts Clinton win.

[Tender Branson]

I'd predict a 47-43-8-2 Clinton win right now (popular vote).

MoE = +/- 0.5%

It's unlikely that Hillary will get more than 50% ...

[The Other Castro]

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

Well...yeah?

[trumpsta]

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

Not this time, sweetheart

[trumpsta]

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

Not this time, sweetheart

IceSpear?

No, Benedict Arnold's mom

[GMantis]

Lichtman has obviously falsified the second and almost certainly the fourth key (Johnson and Stein will almost certainly have more than 5% together and they take more votes from Clinton than from Trump). But to his defense, his model has no way to react to the challenger party losing an easily winnable election because they nominated a terrible candidate, which is not surprising when you consider it hasn't happened any time recently (1948 is probably the last time it happened, considering that the Republicans should have won by the Lichtman keys).

[Cory]

Lichtman has obviously falsified the second and almost certainly the fourth key (Johnson and Stein will almost certainly have more than 5% together and they take more votes from Clinton than from Trump). But to his defense, his model has no way to react to the challenger party losing an easily winnable election because they nominated a terrible candidate, which is not surprising when you consider it hasn't happened any time recently (1948 is probably the last time it happened, considering that the Republicans should have won by the Lichtman keys).

[Kingpoleon]

What predictions did he get perfectly right? The Keys he made with hindsight?

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

What predictions did he get perfectly right? The Keys he made with hindsight?

He correctly predicted the popular vote winner months and sometimes even years in advance for all the elections from 1984 to 2012. Even when the candidates themselves weren't known yet, he predicted which party would win. So I think some posters in this thread are being a bit hard on him.

[ursulahx]

Lichtman moves the goalposts again...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-is-going-to-win-beat-hillary-clinton-predictions-polls-al-a7325716.html

He seems to be following opinion now, not predicting it.

[Alcon]

What predictions did he get perfectly right? The Keys he made with hindsight?

He correctly predicted the popular vote winner months and sometimes even years in advance for all the elections from 1984 to 2012. Even when the candidates themselves weren't known yet, he predicted which party would win. So I think some posters in this thread are being a bit hard on him.

My issue isn't with his record.  That famous Election-Picking Octopus has a pretty damn good record, too -- and obviously Lichtman is identifying variables that have some degree of relevance, so I wouldn't allege he's entirely skating on luck.  My problem is that the idea that his methodology identifies the relevant variables in an election so completely that you can add up "points" to accurately estimate a winner...it's pretty absurd.  I also just don't think highly of the way he talks about his system.  I think he sees it as methodologically very serious, instead of being a useful way of thinking through things.

[muon2]

Lichtman moves the goalposts again...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-is-going-to-win-beat-hillary-clinton-predictions-polls-al-a7325716.html

He seems to be following opinion now, not predicting it.

He was actually stuck following opinion earlier, as I posted before. His system clearly has predicted a Trump win for months now, but Lichtman just couldn't accept that. He has now committed on foreign policy success against the Dems. Even so, he's still hedging a little in his comments. He still won't credit Bernie's primary performance, so that way if Johnson stays below 5% and Clinton wins he can claim victory.

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.

[‼realJohnEwards‼]

The Johnson key is a bit dubious though. His polling has fallen to around 8-9%, and he seems to be taking about equally from each candidate. Doesn't make much sense

[ursulahx]

He was actually stuck following opinion earlier, as I posted before. His system clearly has predicted a Trump win for months now, but Lichtman just couldn't accept that. He has now committed on foreign policy success against the Dems. Even so, he's still hedging a little in his comments. He still won't credit Bernie's primary performance, so that way if Johnson stays below 5% and Clinton wins he can claim victory.

Yes, his comments on Trump being a model-busting candidate basically amount to, "even if I'm wrong, I'm right."

[JerryArkansas]

Wow, I never realized this guy was such a show boater.  His criteria is so vague you can put yourself on either side of it an most of his "keys".  He just wants to hedge his bets and make his sterling record, which was broken in 2000 look somewhat clean.

[KingSweden]

I like Pollyvote's track record better AND their method makes sense more transparently

[muon2]

Wow, I never realized this guy was such a show boater.  His criteria is so vague you can put yourself on either side of it an most of his "keys".  He just wants to hedge his bets and make his sterling record, which was broken in 2000 look somewhat clean.

The model may have problems but 2000 was not one of them. When he developed the model in the 1980's he clearly said this was only to predict the popular vote winner since 1860. He used 1876 and 1888 as examples where his model would have called the popular vote winner, not the EC winner.

[GMantis]

Wow, I never realized this guy was such a show boater.  His criteria is so vague you can put yourself on either side of it an most of his "keys".  He just wants to hedge his bets and make his sterling record, which was broken in 2000 look somewhat clean.

The model may have problems but 2000 was not one of them. When he developed the model in the 1980's he clearly said this was only to predict the popular vote winner since 1860. He used 1876 and 1888 as examples where his model would have called the popular vote winner, not the EC winner.

There is of course the fact that in both of these elections there was massive voter suppression of Blacks in the South, so dubious whether the Democrats would have won the popular vote under fair conditions in either one, especially in 1888.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There's a first time for everything... but let's hope that first time won't be now.

[ursulahx]

Of course if one candidate wins the PV and the other wins the EV, Lichtman wins either way!

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

How the hell is he still claiming Democrats have Key 2? In the book, he clearly states the winner must have 2/3's of the delegates...HRC got 3/5's of the delegates. 3/5's is less than 2/3's. This is not rocket science.

I don't have a problem with him saying Trump is so different from any other candidates in history that he could thwart the Keys. Now I know what you're saying....there's been other candidates like that...George McGovern, Barry Goldwater, William Jennings Bryan,etc. The problem is those guys were running in years where the fundamentals clearly did not favor their party.

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

How the hell is he still claiming Democrats have Key 2? In the book, he clearly states the winner must have 2/3's of the delegates...HRC got 3/5's of the delegates. 3/5's is less than 2/3's. This is not rocket science.

He believes that since Clinton was never in serious danger of losing her lead after SC, and because Bernie was supportive at the convention, it doesn't count as a "serious" challenge.

[BlueSwan]

I got 99 concerns about this election, but the Lichtman model ain't one.

[ursulahx]

How the hell is he still claiming Democrats have Key 2? In the book, he clearly states the winner must have 2/3's of the delegates...HRC got 3/5's of the delegates. 3/5's is less than 2/3's. This is not rocket science.

He believes that since Clinton was never in serious danger of losing her lead after SC, and because Bernie was supportive at the convention, it doesn't count as a "serious" challenge.

Back in March, he was saying just the opposite. He had Key 2 as a 'False'. (Don't have the link to hand). Lichtman has been all over the place this year, and using "oh, but Trump is different" as an excuse is just a bit feeble.

To be fair on Lichtman, citing him as a "never wrong" pundit is the media's spin on his predictions. He was 'wrong' in 2000 - people don't want to know who's going to win the popular vote, they want to know who their president is going to be for the next four years. A prediction that tells them anything else is just not as valuable.

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

How the hell is he still claiming Democrats have Key 2? In the book, he clearly states the winner must have 2/3's of the delegates...HRC got 3/5's of the delegates. 3/5's is less than 2/3's. This is not rocket science.

He believes that since Clinton was never in serious danger of losing her lead after SC, and because Bernie was supportive at the convention, it doesn't count as a "serious" challenge.

He turned the key against Carter in 1980 even though he had a HIGHER percentage of the delegates (a little under 64%) than Clinton did this time. He's clearly moving the goalposts. Not to sound arrogant, but leave it to someone like me who's actually read the book to be able to question Lichtman's own logic.

[Torie]

This whole thing is an exercise in data mining at its worst.