The Keys are based on the theory that presidential election results turn primarily on the performance of the party controlling the White House and that campaigning by challenging or incumbent-party candidates will have no impact on results. According to this theory, a pragmatic American electorate chooses a president based on the performance of the party holding the White House as measured by the consequential events and episodes of a term – economic boom and bust, foreign policy successes and failures, social unrest, scandal, and policy innovation. According to the theory, if the nation fares well during the term of the incumbent party, that party wins another four years in office; otherwise, the challenging party prevails. According to the Keys model, nothing that a candidate has said or done during a campaign, when the public discounts conventional electioneering as political spin, has changed their prospects at the polls. Debates, advertising, television appearances, news coverage, and campaign strategies count for virtually nothing on Election Day. Through the application of pattern recognition methodology used in geophysics to data for American presidential elections from 1860 onwards, Lichtman and Keilis-Borok developed 13 diagnostic questions that are stated as propositions that favor reelection of the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote. Unlike many alternative models, the Keys include no polling data. In addition, the Keys do not presume that voters are driven by economic concerns alone. Answers to the questions posed in the Keys require judgments. But the judgments are constrained by explicit definitions of each Key. For example, a contested incumbent party nomination is defined as one in which the losing candidates combined secured at least one-third of the delegate votes. Judgments are also constrained by how individual keys have been turned in all previous elections covered by the system. For example, to qualify as charismatic and turn key 12 or 13 – the most judgmental of all keys – an incumbent or challenging-party candidate must measure up to Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. This forecast is incorporated in the PollyVote.
Track record
In the contested election of 2000, the system predicted the popular vote winner, although not actual winners. As a result in 2000, he predicted using his system that Gore would be the next president; Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. In September 2016, the Keys forecasted that Donald Trump would win the popular vote in the 2016 election, whereas he lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college.
Popular vote versus electoral college
Lichtman's keys are predominantly a predictor of the popular vote. The one exception to this rule is the election of 1876, where the replacement of independent Supreme Court justiceDavid Davis with a Republican on the Electoral Commission of 1877 and a political deal put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House in return for ending Reconstruction. This happened in spite of three major circumstances: firstly, the Republican Party had nine negative keys that year; secondly, Hayes lost the popular vote by three percent: and thirdly, at least three states had conflicting sets of election returns, any one of which could have thrown the electoral college to Samuel Tilden.
The 13 Keys to the White House
The Keys are statements that favor victory for the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote.
Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Long-term economy: Real per capitaeconomic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
The above 13 keys are slightly different from the 12 keys originally proposed in 1981.
Criticism
The model has been criticised by statisticians as including too many predictors to be a sound model and for forecasting only the winner of elections rather than the vote share of the winning party. In 2011, Megan McArdle incorrectly found that when applied to Herbert Hoover in 1932, the model fails. She assessed that Hoover would have had six keys, which she asserted was just enough for re-election. However, the model requires eight or more keys for the incumbent party to win re-election.
