Polls may not be right, but this Professor has been spot on since 1984

[RogueSemicolon]

An article from PollyVote explains Alan Lichtman’s 13 Keys method for predicting presidential elections. The 13 Keys are, as quoted from PollyVote:

Keys	Topic	Threshold Condition
1	Party Mandate	After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.
2	Contest	There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.
3	Incumbency	The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.
4	Third Party	There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5	Short-Term Economy	The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6	Long-Term Economy	Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7	Policy Change	The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8	Social Unrest	There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9	Scandal	The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10	Foreign/Military Failure	The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11	Foreign/Military Success	The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12	Incumbent Charisma	The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13	Challenger Charisma	The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

“Unlike other systems for predicting election results, the Keys do not assume a fixed relationship between election results and one more dependent variables, such as economic growth or presidential approval ratings. Rather predictions are based on an index comprised of the number of false or negative keys: When five or fewer keys are false, the incumbent party wins; when any six or more are false, the challenging party wins.”

According to CBS News, Lichtman says “seven of the 13 keys favor Biden and six favor Trump, giving the presumptive Democratic nominee the slightest advantage for victory.” Using the above system, Lichtman seems to claim Trump possesses Keys 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 13, noting that Trump fails to qualify as a charismatic incumbent because his charisma appeals only to a small segment of his supporters, which cancels out the advantage he holds from Joe Biden’s lack of charisma.

Joe Biden, then, is predicted to win based on having more Democratic seats in the US House, a recession occurring amidst the election campaign, no economic growth in the previous two terms, sustained social unrest, Trump’s propensity for producing major scandals, Trump having no significant foreign or military success to speak of, and Trump’s charisma failing to appeal to people outside his most loyal supporters.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I read that too and the first thing I noticed was he predicted Gore would win and the article had to explain that away with “Gore did win the popular vote”.

Well heck, so did Hillary. Did the Prof pick Hillary?

Just another fake news article.

 

[RogueSemicolon]

Professor Lichtman predicted Donald Trump would win the 2016 election. I think the anomaly of the false 2000 election prediction is, in part, explained by his method failing to account for shenanigans through voter suppression, voter manipulation, and Supreme Court interventions. It’s possible voter suppression and manipulation–say, from covert social media campaigns from foreign operatives to sow distrust, anxiety, and division in America for the purpose of destabilizing it–could play in Trump’s favor and prove Lichtman’s prediction wrong once again, but it’s hard to tell the extent to which this will help or not.

 

[7_Sorrows]

How do you call creating jobs and increasing employment for all Americans
a bad situation?

 

[7_Sorrows]

7_Sorrows:

How do you call creating jobs and increasing employment for all Americans
a bad situation?

Well, there is the butchered response to COVID resulting in crashing the US economy and 160,000 Americans dying.

So what does your magic ball say he should have done?

The leaders of Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, France, UK, Italy,
Germany, Phillipines and many other countries are all waiting to hear your wisdom about how they should have responded.

Can you tell me how many people die annually from cancer, opiod deaths, traffic
accidents or the flu? Those happen daily, weekly, monthly - year after year. Are
you not concerned about those deaths or are you going to blame all those deaths
on President Trump also?

This is a novel coronavirus. This is a global pandemic. This event was new for
everyone. Perhaps if China had notified WHO as soon as they realized they had a problem, fewer people around the world including the U.S. would have died.

However, I realize one’s contempt for President Trump prevents one from having any rational discussion because it is easier to ignore the facts and feed
the contempt one has and bias against President Trump. @Thbolt

 

[JonNC]

So, the logic here is that 160,000 Americans are dead and the economy is in the worst recession since the Great Depression if not worse and you think that a strong argument to support Trump is that you can imagine things getting worse?

Yes, things can get much worse.
A pandemic is beyond the control of any leader. That’s why it is worldwide. That’s why it is called a pandemic. Not one world leader has a cure.
Tyranny, on the other hand, like that stated by @Ridgerunner, is under our control. It is preventable. And it would be far worse than the pandemic.

 

[JonNC]

Yep, that is a start. Keep working on it and post it here.

How did our withdrawal from the WHO impact our response to Covid?

 

[JonNC]

Well, there is the butchered response to COVID resulting in crashing the US economy and 160,000 Americans dying.

The butchered response was in New York, New Jersey, And some surrounding states. New Jersey’s deaths per million is about 1700! Florida’s is something over 200. Texas’ is lower than that. New York is about 1200.

So tell me, did Trump do things better in Texas and Florida, or did Cuomo and Murphy make a huge mistake putting Covid cases back into nursing homes?

Cuomo and Murphy are lousy governors, but they didn’t make these disastrous mistakes on purpose. They made mistakes out of ignorance.
It is outrageous demagoguery when Trump is held to a different standard than that.

 

[RidgeSprinter]

The leaders of Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, France, UK, Italy,
Germany, Phillipines and many other countries are all waiting to hear your wisdom about how they should have responded.

Maybe Trump should be consulting Australia, Phillipines, & South Korea about how they should have responded. They seem to have things quite under control.

More so consult South Korea, they are packed to the gills per square mile.

In your list, only Brazil approaches the USA problem wise.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[JonNC]

But leaders do have control to put in place measures to prevent the spread and reduce the number of deaths.

Depending on the level of government. The general government has Constitutionally limited powers. Most of the authority is in the hands of the states. Fauci said Trump said yes to everything they asked for. No governor was short on ventilators. No jurisdiction was overwhelmed. Most extra beds provided by the general government were not used. We test more people than any country in the world.
If we were to exclude New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, the US deaths per million look far more like Germany. You can blame Cuomo and Murphy if you want, but I tend to not judge people for actions taken in good faith. I assume they acted in good faith.

Tyranny, eh? What tyranny did Ridgerunner state?

But I’ll say this. If Trump loses, we’re in for the worst recession since 1929, religious persecution, public funding of abortion, “hate speech” prosecutions of dissent and total weaponization of the powers of government against dissent. But Walmart stock will go up because we’ll buy everything from China again

 

[vz71]

We’ll be a richer version of Venezuela.

At least until we run out of money.

Venezuela was rich too.

 

[JonNC]

The virus came into the United States from foreign countries, which is under the jurisdiction of federal government.

Which is why Trump took action as early as January. I’m still not sure what other actions Progressives think he should’ve taken.
(It’s funny because foreign nationals here illegally came from foreign countries but progressives don’t want Trump to deal with it. )

We have (for right or wrong) depended on the federal government to lead efforts in times of national emergency such as hurricanes and put significant resources for attacking these types of problems in the hands of the federal government.

And it has. Ventilators, travel restrictions, virtually instant hospital beds, PPEs, even medical staff. But the states have responsibility for their citizens. When Trump threatened to intervene, he was roundly criticized. When he doesn’t intervene, he is roundly criticized.
I think the federal government has done a good job under the circumstances. And even states like New York and New Jersey, where deaths per million are horrendous, I think those governors should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Ah, Ridgerunner has a vivid imagination.

I think he has a firm grasp of the situation.

 

[JonNC]

I remember reading an article from a journalist who came into the US from Italy when the outbreak happened there and he was shocked how unprepared the US when he came in. No questions, no testing, no nothing. Then an outbreak. That’s on the federal government.

It is amazing how 20/20 hindsight works. I’m sure you wrote about what we should do back in February.
I notice not a word about Cuomo and Murphy.
Our deaths per million is about 100 less than Italy. If it weren’t for Murphy and Cuomo, Our deaths per million would be far smaller.

Not really. Not enough testing. Not even PPE. The things needed to keep it from spreading. Now it is everywhere.

No testing because we had no way of testing. Once we did, testing in America is far greater than anywhere in the world. Not a single governor complained that the general government didn’t provide what they needed. And Trump was right: these are a state government responsibility.

 

[pnewton]

Can you tell me how many people die annually from cancer, opiod deaths, traffic
accidents or the flu?

FastStats

FastStats is an official application from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and puts access to topic-specific statistics at your fingertips.

www.cdc.gov

The more important question than what Trump did right or wrong is how his moves were perceived by the American voters. Like I said on another thread, he is liable to lose hundreds of thousands of votes based on perception alone among those whose loved ones died. Now, he has added voting age TikTok users who will see him as a tyrant.

That will probably account for several dozen more votes against him.

 

[Thorolfr]

Thbolt:

7_Sorrows:

How do you call creating jobs and increasing employment for all Americans
a bad situation?

Well, there is the butchered response to COVID resulting in crashing the US economy and 160,000 Americans dying.

So what does your magic ball say he should have done?

The leaders of Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, France, UK, Italy,
Germany, Phillipines and many other countries are all waiting to hear your wisdom about how they should have responded.

If the US had responded like Germany, for example, and cut our daily infection rate down to 1.1 per 100,000 instead of what we have in the US now, 17 per 100,000, wouldn’t that have been better? And if we had the same Covid death rate over the last seven days in the US as what they do in Germany, about 216 people would have died of Covid in the last week instead of 7116. Wouldn’t that have been better, too?

 

[Pattylt]

Because hindsight is 20/20, I can identify several missteps that Trump made. I also give him kudos for some very good steps.

I’m just a retired Medical Technologist which is certainly not an epidemiologist! I was pleased when Trump cut off entering anyone from China, however I was disappointed that he imposed no quarantine on the returning Americans from China. That was a big misstep to an otherwise excellent decision.

I understand not wanting to spread fear at the start of this pandemic. Keeping citizens calm is very important. I appreciated his optimism but I think he over emphasized calm which caused many to think it was a minor flu.

He did listen to the recommendations of Dr Fucci but Trump tends to like alternative ideas a it too much. Promoting HCQ before we really had solid evidence caused a huge politicization of a promising drug. I blame both Trump and the Democrats for that unnecessary ordeal. There are just times that Trump mentions things he shouldn’t but that’s his style and the media and Democrats over buy into his musings.

Putting recovering Covid patients into nursing homes was incredibly stupid in hindsight. I’m still trying to figure out why Cuomo thought that was ok. He wasn’t trying to kill the elderly or spread the virus so I assume he thought these patients weren’t contagious and he was so very wrong.

One final irritant I do have with Trump was his refusal to wear a mask. He should have led by example rather than worrying about not looking presidential enough. We now have a political divide on wearing a mask for no good reason. If he had promoted mask wearing we wouldn’t have this anti mask issue at all…just a few stubborn people that don’t like them but not a political battle over a mask.

I’m disappointed that we didn’t aggressively do contact tracing and mandated quarantine and should have started that plan earlier and involved more tracers. I don’t blame Trump for this. I think it was just a failure to commit more heavily earlier on. This is on each state.

 

[JonNC]

It still would be 400 deaths per million.

Maybe, but the states who have had the later first spike like Texas and Florida are 200 and below.

I seem to remember a lot of governors complaining about not getting what they needed from the federal government

That’s not what I recall. Inslee, Cuomo, most of them said they got what they needed.

Now, if you want to take the tact that national emergencies aren’t the responsibility of the federal government, then keep that in mind the next time a hurricane hits America.

They are not. FEMAs job is to assist the states. The states have the primary responsibility.

 

[7_Sorrows]

0.0454% deaths is a very low percentage out of 5 million infected.

If you look at the chart of deaths per capita, U.S. is below Belgium, UK, Spain and U.S.A. is actually number 7 or 8. @RidgeSprinter

 

[JanR]

I hope he’s wrong this time.

 

[JonNC]

381 and 293 respectively and going up because deaths tend to lag about 2 weeks behind new cases. That is despite knowing everything we now know.

Nine of the first ten states in terms of deaths per 100,000 have Democrat governors. New York is roughly 5 times that of Florida, and Florida has a significant retired population.
If we are going to lay blame at the feet of elected officials, Covid resembles police attacks on unarmed blacks: the worst is clearly in Democrat jurisdictions.

Then you should have paid more attention at the time because there were definitely complaints from the governors to the point where they were having shipments come in from suppliers and be guarded by the National Guard so that the federal government wouldn’t take it (a bit of an overreaction if you ask me).

I did. I came to the listening without the desire to blame bad Orange man. In fact, without a willingness to blame any leader.

And yet without that support, the states couldn’t handle it. Plus they can ask for usually receive federal disaster aid money.

I think states can handle it. They should handle it. Federal help as a last resort.