Since he began tracking U.S. elections in 1980, Allan
Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University, has
gained the admiration of his peers for correctly predicting every presidential
race since 1984. He does it not with the kind of "big data" analysis
that has made media stars out of the likes of Nate Silver. Rather, he uses a
relatively simple, 13-point system - derived, believe it or not, from the same
inexact science that predicts earthquakes. And according to his system (which is
outlined in his book Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White
House), the election has long belonged to Donald Trump. With three days left to
Decision 2016, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Prof. Lichtman to see if
he was standing by his results. If you're expecting a gleeful prophet of doom,
think again. As this conversation will make abundantly clear, no one is
unhappier about his findings than Lichtman himself.
How did you come up with this system?
I'd love to tell you I did it by a lot of brilliant
thinking, but I did it by accident. In 1981, I was a visiting scholar at
CalTech and I came across another visiting scholar - a renowned mathematician
and world's leading authority of earthquake predictions from Moscow. He
suggested we use the methods of earthquake prediction to predict elections.
I was very skeptical. So I started to think about it:
Everything we know about elections is stolen from geophysics anyway, right?
"Landslides." "Political earthquakes." "Volcanic
change."
And so we conceptualized elections in geophysical terms.
As stability, the party in power keeps the White House.
Earthquake, the party in power is tossed out.
We looked at the political environment, elections from
1860 to 1980, guided by the thesis the presidential elections are primarily
judgments on the strength and performance of the party heading the White House.
That's how we divide the 13 key factors. Then we arrived at the decision rule
that 6 or more keys going against the party in power predicts their defeat. And
that system has correctly forecast every American presidential election since
then. Eight in a row, from 1984 to 2012.
And the keys are saying Trump will win! How, uh, sure
are we about that?
I'm not confident at all. I'm not a hedger. I have never
hedged a prediction. I have stuck by predictions contrary to the polls and
pundits many times in the past. I predicted a George H. W. Bush victory in May
of 1998 when he was trailing Michael Dukakis by 17 points in the polls and
every pundit had written him off. I predicted the very-hard-to-call 2012
election back in 2010, and stuck with my prediction even after Obama's
disastrous first debate the polls turned against him.
But for the first time I have qualified my prediction.
My prediction is based on history and for the first time in Donald Trump we
have a history-smashing candidate: We never had a candidate before who has no
record in public service; a record of enriching himself throughout his life at
the expense of others, whether through bankruptcies, his Trump Foundation or
Trump University; we've never had a candidate who has called into question the
integrity of democracy and threatened not to accept the result of the election;
we've never had a candidate who openly brags about sexually assaulting women
and then 12 women come forward saying he did that. Back in 2012, a guy named
Herman Cain was the favorite for the Republican nomination. Then three or four
women accused him of sexual harassment and he was driven out the of the race.
Unlike Cain, Trump brags about sexual harassing women.
And so you have two contending forces here: The force of
history, that it should be a change election, in which a generic Republican
should win - if it was John Kasich or Jeb Bush it would be no question. But you
have Trump, a candidate so far out of the box he may be capable of snatching
defeat from the jaws of victory. Then you have so many other things that are
troubling and unprecedented in this election. You have the Russians meddling in
this election. We've never before had a foreign power blatantly interfering to
help elect their preferred candidate. You have the FBI, not just once but twice
releasing damaging material just weeks before an election. So this election
keeps me sleepless at night I have to say.
Is it perhaps time to revise your trusted 13-key system?
Well, here's the big question: Is this election an
anomaly, that we're not going to see again? Or are we seeing a permanent and I
think very negative change in our politics: when it's OK to assault women; when
it's OK to be endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan; when it is OK to demean democracy;
when it is OK for foreign powers to intervene blatantly in our election. When
things are so polarized that neither side is likely to accept the legitimacy of
the other side. I don't mean just being opposed to it. I mean saying,
"This is not acceptable."
One of the keys refers to the candidates' charisma. But
that has to be somewhat subjective, no?
You're dealing in human systems. So, yes, some of the
keys involved judgment, but the judgments are pretty constrained. And they've been answered retrospectively.
Quite clearly, Hillary Clinton, as I define it, is not the once-in-a-generation
inspirational candidate like Ronald Reagan or FDR. Now, you may think Trump is
charismatic - but he is only charismatic to a slice of the electorate.
Unlike say a Ronald Reagan who had broad appeal, who
brought out a lot of Reagan Democrats, Trump does not fulfill. You can't call a
candidate charismatic of whom 60 percent of Americans do not view as fit to be
president.
But then to what do you ascribe this Teflon quality he
has? There's no depths to which he can seemingly go and the polls barely move.
Regardless of his reprehensible personal
characteristics, there are many Americans who say I am going to overlook that
and vote for change. A generic Republican would be a much easier prediction.
The other thing about Donald Trump and these negative characteristics that
people seem to be overlooking is you have two entities, and on the other side
pumping out all kinds of negative information about Hillary Clinton.
50,000 leaked docs, traced to Russians, on the
Democratic side.
Republican side? Zero. You don't have to be Sherlock
Holmes to figure out which side the Russians are on. The media has swallowed
hook, line and sinker on WikiLeaks. Marco Rubio, to his credit, said it right:
No one should be using WikiLeaks because it sets a horrible precedent for U.S.
elections. Yet the media goes on and on and on. Can you imagine if we had
leaked emails from Paul Mannafort or Roger Stone of Stephen Bannon?
The second thing of course is [FBI Director] James
Comey. He has unbelievably broken precedent after precedent to intervene in
this election on the side of Donald Trump. The first thing was when he found
that Hillary Clinton hadn't done anything to recommend prosecution he should
have kept his big mouth shut. He had no business opining and editorializing the
fact the she was very careless in her use of emails. Imagine you are being
investigated about your business by the FBI about your financial transactions.
The FBI found you hadn't done anything illegal, but the director went out on
his own volition to say you had been extremely careless in your financial
transactions. It would have wrecked your business. And that's just what Comey
did. Then, much worse, 11 days before the election, he drops this bombshell of
these emails. He's no political novice. He knew it would be a huge bombshell.
It was an immense benefit to Donald Trump. It's showing up in the polls. And it
contained no information. It served no public purpose except to cover himself.
"Apparently pertinent." "May not be
significant." So you have these two entities, the FBI, whose integrity has
been shredded, and the Russians on the other side. James Comey should resign
today.
What do you tell your concerned family members and
friends?
I tell them I'm very fearful about our democracy. I'm
almost 70 years old and it doesn't matter that much to me - but it matters so
much for my kids what's become of our democracy. The FBI becoming a political
player. Unbelievable. The Russians with impunity influencing our elections.
Will it now be open-season for any foreign power that has a favorite candidate
to jump in and interfere in our elections? I worry about claims that our
democracy is rigged. That our elections aren't legitimate. I worry that the
worse elements of our society have been stirred up. Ku Klux Klan newspaper just
endorsed Donald Trump. Can you imagine the Ku Klux Klan endorsing a major-party
candidate?
Every anti-Semitic group, neo-Nazi, White Supremacist
group has been encouraged by this election to think their time has come. I'm
Jewish. And I know this is how it starts. And it worries me to the marrow of my
being. And I study these issues. I wrote a book about FDR and the Jews. This is
how these things begin. I encourage everyone to read Sinclair Lewis' book, It
Can't Happen Here. It can happen here.
So with 3 days left to the election, you're standing by
your system. You predict a Trump win.
We'll see. On the one hand I'll be the biggest genius in
the world. On the other hand, I'll be the most depressed person in the world.
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