Allan Lichtman's 13 Keys Run Headlong into the Multiverse

Political prognostication in a time of alternate realities.

Photo by Samantha Lam on Unsplash

Do you remember when CBS or NBC¹ had their Sunday night movies? I’ve been trying to start that tradition with the hubby. I am so out of touch with the cinema world anymore, though I don’t think we always have to watch new movies, just maybe new to us movies or movies we haven’t seen in a long time.

So this Sunday it was Deadpool and Wolverine, honestly my two favorite Marvel characters, though I think I’m hardly alone. If you want to know what I thought, you’ll have to wait until Saturday. But it occurred to me this morning as I thought about our political landscape that the idea of a “multiverse” is helpful.

To that end, let’s step back and start here.

Why didn’t he get a landslide according to Zachary Wolf?

Well, he didn’t really gain that many votes.

As of Saturday, Trump is winning the popular vote with a little more than 74.5 million votes, although millions of votes have yet to be counted in California, Washington and Utah, among others. The final 2024 popular vote tally likely won’t be known until December.

When he lost convincingly in 2020, Trump got a little more than 74 million votes.

I love how in the “new normal,” it takes until December to find out the popular vote tally. If you want people to believe that elections are valid, you don’t take a month to count the votes. A month gives states a long time for shenanigans.

And “convincingly”? Well, I’m still in the process of being convinced and being less convinced every day. But that’s neither here nor there.

The other reason it wasn’t a landslide, according to Mr. Wolf? The electoral college.

In terms of the Electoral College, Trump won 312 electoral votes. It’s a solid win, but in the lower half of US presidential elections.

So Zachary Wolf is right in that by previous standards, Trump’s win was not landslide. Earning 50.4 percent of the voting public (to Harris’s 48.0 percent) is not by any previous standard a “mandate,” Mr. Wolf calls it such, but he does that because he has some semblance of self-awareness. He knows anything slightly over 50 percent is the best a party can hope for.

But let’s be honest. That’s like putting 100 people in a room, having fifty people give you the thumbs up, forty-eight the thumbs down, two nominate Susie from HR because she makes the best cookies ever (even though no one can figure out why the company wastes money on her), and one goes . . . sure.

Hardly a resounding triumph.

But the reason for this is that the electorate is split pretty evenly into at least two separate and nearly immoveable camps.

And so when you’re trying to predict who will win each election, you’re really only trying to predict that small sliver of people that are willing to be budged.

And that is what Allen Lichtman does . . . well, did . . . or maybe tried to do.

Before this week, the American University professor correctly predicted nine of the 10 last elections. His previous 90% success rate has declined to 81.8% after now president-elect Donald Trump decisively secured a second White House term four years after losing reelection to President Joe Biden.

Just for the record, his other miscall was when Bush Jr. beat Convenient Truth in 2000.

What did Mr. Lichtman blame his error on?

Lichtman shared the two major reasons his "13 Keys to the White House" prediction system failed this year, including disdain for the Biden-Harris administration . . .

You’d think the popularity of the incumbent administration would factor in somehow. I kind of see that as a flaw.

. . . and Harris' delayed campaign start after Biden dropped out of the election on July 21. He added that Harris being the only nominee in modern history to avoid participating in primaries and caucuses was also a factor despite Democrats "doing the best they could."

If that was the best they could do, I’d hate to have seen the worst.

He goes on to double down.

"I don't think I called any (keys) wrong," Lichtman said. "The contest key was rendered problematic by what went on by the Democratic Party but I don't think you can say I called it wrong except for in retrospect.”

They say hindsight is 20/20, but let’s not take Mr. Lichtman at his word.

So here are the “13 Keys.”

Here were Lichtman’s determinations on the keys before Biden bowed out.

He didn’t seem to change any of these when Harris took over.

So what do you notice? Well, if you’re me, even at the time you caught this little story on Fox News way back when, you noticed that this reflects a certain “reality,” one entirely shaped by the mainstream media. This is how you would judge the situation if you lived in the MSM timeline of the Multiverse. Economy is pretty good, no social unrest, no scandal,² and foreign policy is only slightly questionable.³ And that challenger is pretty boring, I mean, for being a fascist.

So now let’s look at these “keys” from the point of view of someone outside the MSM timeline of the Multiverse, even without the benefit of hindsight.

Key 1 is a matter of math, and it is indeed false. The Democrats did not gain seats in 2022.

Key 2 is only true when examined superficially. You can tell even Democrats afterward realized their mistake.

Who’s going to tell Ms. Nancy that if she had the power to kick Biden to the curb now she could have done it a year ago? She has no one to blame but herself.

Therefore, we don’t know that Key 2 is “true.” The discord caused by throwing out one candidate and bringing in another without any kind of open process indicates an attempt to avoid conflict. If you’re trying to avoid conflict, there is indeed conflict to be had. In other words, outside the MSM-verse, this one leans false.

Key 3 became false the moment they switched Biden out for someone else. The incumbent was no longer running.

Key 4 is, as Key 2, only “true” on the surface. The third-party candidate pulling the most votes joined with Trump, so what do you do with that? He still exists and now he’s given his support to the opposition. So from a certain point of view, this effectively leans false.

Key 5 is true statistically speaking perhaps. But people don’t live in statistics. They live in the real world. People’s short-term expectations economically are not good. Nothing is going down. Inflation may have slowed, but income is nowhere near catching up. So on the ground, this one leans false.

Key 6 also leans false. Just as people’s short-term economic outlook was not rosy, neither was their long-term. They’re living on credit cards, racking up debt, and spending down their savings just to get by with no change insight. Saving for retirement, leaving your children anything in a will, buying a home, helping your kids with college, all long-term goals, and all looking bleak. All those great offers Kamala made to “help the middle class” were one time deals that in no way solved the main long-term problems.

Key 7 is true, though I find this one strange as you’d want to know if those policies were popular.

Key 8 leans false. I know there was no major social unrest, but there was social unrest over the US support for Israel, and in such an evenly divided electorate, it had an outsized effect.

Muslims make up a little over 1 percent of the population, but a chunk of the younger non-Muslim crowd is sympathetic to their cause. Did it cost Harris the election? *shrug* But it did cost Harris in two ways. Not only did she lose Muslim voters and Gaza-sympathetic voters, but her dithering gave the other side a chance to portray her as soft on Hamas, so I’m guessing it lost her a few Israel-sympathetic Jewish votes too.

Key 9 is laughably, hilariously false. The only way you think this even “leans true” is if you’re caught in an MSM universe. Otherwise, the Biden administration as a whole and Harris’s elevation are nothing but scandal given the way the media and Harris covered up Biden’s corruption and mental failings and then just kind of elevated the cackling VP to the top of the ticket.

Key 10 and Key 11 are both false. Biden has his fair of foreign and military failures and no successes. The only way you’d think these “lean false” is again if you are locked in the MSM bubble.

Key 12 is false. Biden is no hero and he’s not charismatic. And they were trying to make this “true” by painting Harris as a first, but it only worked for a certain crowd.

Key 13 is also false, depending on whom you ask. Trump does have a certain amount of charisma and for a certain crowd he’s quite heroic. Even Putin says so . . .

I know, probably not the best endorsement for the current times, especially if you’re dealing with the Russia-deranged, but credit where credit is due, to see Trump not only not crawl away cowering as shots range out but have the wherewithal to stand up and exploit the moment . . . that takes a level of fortitude I’ve not seen in a politician in a long time. Courage or stupidity, I suppose it can look the same, but to a certain group, he became a hero.

If I go through that, I count up twelve “falses” and only one “true.” By that measure, Harris was destined for failure. Now, is my interpretation right or is Lichtman’s? Well, Harris lost, so many shared my interpretation.

And that’s the crux of the situation: the question isn’t whether each key is true or false. The question is how many people would interpret them say my way and how many interpret them the MSM way.

Or as Lichtman claimed . . .

He also cited an "incredible explosion of disinformation" on platforms like X where untrue statements spread at a large scale, including claims that the stock market was crashing and that the unemployment rate was at an all-time high.

Ah, the old “disinformation” routine. How come “disinformation” sounds a lot like “does not accept my description of reality”?

Asked if he is going to rethink the “keys,” Lichtman responded . . .

"I don't think the problem was the keys themselves. You cannot change a model on the fly based on its failure in one election. The model has been built up over 41 elections," Lichtman said.

He said his predictions, which have often gone against most political pundits, are still a more efficient indicator than other models.

And that may well be true. If used with an open mind, the keys may well be the best way to predict the outcome. But an open mind requires understanding that not everyone lives in the MSM-verse.

If Mr. Lichtman was trying to help the Democrats (and it seems he was), he might have warned them that not everyone bought into their particular reality.

But, and here is the warning, that goes the other way too. The “right” needs to understand that not everyone lives in their reality. In fact, they might want to learn that the biggest mistake of the “left” was trying to create a reality rather than describe one, trying to enforce a reality rather than live in the one that exists and reach people there.

While you might hang on to a chunk of your base, you could very well lose that tiny sliver of people upon whom elections turn.

And then you’ll get get relegated to the “Void” and eaten by Alioth.

Who says Hollywood isn’t good for something now and then?

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I know. Today’s a stretch, not one of my more eloquent pieces. But I hope you enjoyed it anyway. I first saw Lichtman’s prediction in a Fox article. I wondered how his prognostication would pan out, and here we are. Not too well, as it turns out. Think he’ll learn? Nah, me either.

1. I know it wasn’t ABC, because we didn’t have it, and it also wasn’t PBS, because they were too hoity-toity for Sunday night movies. Besides, we could only watch PBS in the kitchen, and only if the foil was just right on the rabbit ears.

2. What laptop? What payments? Ah, nah, he’s not got dementia; he’s just got a stutter.

3. He got us out of Afghanistan, didn’t he? And sure Zelensky seems like a little clown, but defending democracy against The Putin is totes worth billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives and the threat of nuclear war.