Elections and Predestination: Why Campaign?

Enthusiastic readers of political science may have heard of Allan Lichtman, history professor at American University in Washington D.C. Back in the early 1980s he worked with Russian geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok to develop a mathematical model -- the "Keys to the White House," as Lichtman calls it in his 1996 book -- that has correctly predicted which party will win the White House in every election since 1984.

Lichtman's prediction this time around: Dems, big time.

Lightman presented this prediction at a conference in June 2005. He updated this prediction in a panel discussion at the American Political Science Association in Chicago on August 30, 2007:

Democrats will recapture the White House in 2008, no matter their choice of a nominee. Only an unprecedented cataclysmic change in American politics during the next year could salvage the hopes of the incumbent Republicans [Allan Lichtmann, "The Keys to the White House: Updated Forecast for 2008," presented at Panel on Methods of Long-Range Election Forecasting, American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2007.08.30].

Lichtman finds 7 of the 13 keys in the model point Dem, 3 GOP, and 3 undecided. Here is the professor's Lichtman's breakdown of each key:

The following three keys currently favor the incumbent Republican Party:

1. The absence of social upheavals comparable to the 1960’s avoids the loss of Social Unrest Key 8.
2. The lack of a significant scandal that directly implicates the president averts the loss of Scandal Key 9.
3. No prospective Democratic challenger thus far matches the charisma of Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, keeping the Challenger Charisma/Hero Key 13 in line for the incumbents. [Speaking on Obama's home turf, Lichtman acknowledged that the junior senator from Illinois "could emerge as a charismatic challenging candidate" (p.7), but does the Big O rise to the level of JFK? See the Boston Globe, the NY Times, UK Times....]
   

The following seven keys currently fall against the incumbent party:

1. The Democrats won more than enough U. S. House seats in the 2006 midterm elections to topple Mandate Key 1.
2. The Republicans are battling fiercely in choosing a nominee to replace George W. Bush, turning Contest Key 2 against them.
3. Bush’s inability to run again in 2008 dooms Incumbency Key 3.
4. With bitter partisan divisions in Congress, Bush has failed to achieve the second-term policy revolution needed to secure Policy Change Key 7. [Trying to kill the Lewis and Clark water pipeline probably doesn't help.]
   
5. The War in Iraq is a broadly acknowledged failure and the administration has achieved no offsetting triumph in foreign/military affairs, forfeiting Foreign/Military Failure Key 10...
6. ...and Foreign/Military Success Key 11.
7. Of all GOP candidates on the horizon, none appear to be a Theodore Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, toppling Incumbent Charisma/Hero Key 12.
   

This leaves three keys that are uncertain:

1. Third Party Key 4 depends on whether New York Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who recently switched from Republican to Independent, chooses to run an insurgent campaign for president.
2. Short-Term Economy Key 5 depends on election-year economic trends.
3. Long-Term Economy Key 6 is too close to call, but any diminution of growth [emphasis mine] over the next year will forfeit the key.
   

[Lichtman 2007, pp. 5-7]

You may think I'm jumping for joy to see math confirm that the Dems are in in November. But I'm not. If presidential elections are predetermined by a mere thirteen variables, then what's the point of campaigning, debating, or even blogging? No one blogs about algebra (well, actually...). We don't need an election to find out that x = 1.61803399.

Lichtman's prediction makes me feel like a character in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, living with the knowledge that some psychohistorian has worked out the exact course of history to the nth decimal place. He can't predict exactly how I or any other individual will behave (or vote), but he doesn't have to. The actions of the individual matter no more than the random motions of a single molecule in the cosmic dust cloud; the statistics predict the motion of the cloud -- or in this case, the American electorate -- as a whole.

Of course, even Asimov wrote loopholes into his fictional theory of psychohistory: For a statistical model to predict the course of history, the society under observation can't know the details of the model. Consider: if the vast majority of the electorate read Lichtman's model and accepted his conclusion, they might decide there was no point in voting. Then only the meatheads who can't read statistics would show up at the polls, and then what would we get? The Constitution Party in the White House.

More practically, Lichtman himself chides the Dems for not recognizing the challenge his model predicted for them in 2004 and retooling their strategy to address that challenge (p. 8). Even he believes that knowledge of his model can allow gutsy politicians to beat his model.

The second loophole in Lichtman's Keys and any other forecasting model is that it's still just a statistical model: it says things are likely, not bound to happen. There can always be some random variation, the unusual or extreme action of one small group or one remarkable individual that a general statistical model fails to predict. Lichtman notes (p. 8) that there's a chance -- a slim chance -- the nomination of a woman or an African-American, factors Lichtman's math has never confronted, could throw the model off. And while the forces of history are strong, a lone visionary (Gandhi, Jesus) or lone gunman (can still redirect those forces. Individuals still matter.

So don't worry: Lichtman won't convince this molecule in the gas cloud to abandon a practical belief in free will. But Lichtman's model give me one comfort: if he's right, the Dems win no matter what. We can have our brokered convention, put Dennis back at the top of the ticket, and build Utopia! Yahoo!