September 2004

AU Professor, Historian, Weighs in on Upcoming Election

AU History Professor Allan Lichtman has been keeping busy lately. Busier than usual. As author of the book, The Keys to the White House, he has become a popular favorite with media outlets in Washington, London and beyond.

Lichtman uses his “13 keys” to predict the outcome of elections via popular vote - solely on historical factors and not the use of candidate–preference polls, tactics, or campaign events. He used this system to predict Al Gore’s popular vote victory in 2000, President Clinton’s win in 1996, George Bush’s defeat in 1992, and the outcome of the 1988 presidential election when Michael Dukakis was well ahead in the polls. He has applied his pattern recognition system to mathematically analyze each presidential election since 1860.

In addition to his classroom duties, the historian, author, editorial writer, and news analyst has been working lately as a political analyst on CNN headline news and a regular analyst for the BBC. Over the summer, he went to England and Scotland for a series of State Department-sponsored talks, sharing his insights into the American political system with members of the British Parliament, a U.S.-Scottish business association, and a British think tank.

In Lichtman’s analysis of the two political conventions, the Republicans emerge as the party with the savvier campaign. That is in part because they seemed to be aiming their message at the country as a whole, through broad-brush images that celebrate what they depict as core Republican values, rather than concocting a bland message to that elusive creature, the swing voter.

That common but flawed strategy, he says, is based on the assumption that society is polarized, and the election will be won by appealing to a handful of voters who must be courted with kid gloves. In fact, we are less polarized as a society than in any time in the past, says Lichtman. What has changed is that we look more polarized as a result of the changing party patterns.

The parties once included more divergent voices. The GOP had its “Rockefeller Republicans,” who were liberal on domestic and social policies but conservative in foreign policy, while the Democratic Party had its Southern wing. Now the South elects Republicans, and the politics of the northeast are exemplified by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. There’s simply no crossover anymore between Democrats and Republicans—which can lead to the illusion that there is no crossover in the country as a whole.

Lichtman’s 13 keys are statements that have to do with such factors as the economy, scandal, foreign or military success or failure, and incumbent and challenger charisma. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party wins.

For example, consider the following three keys and ask yourself what the answer might be:

Key 7 - Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

Key 8 - Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

Key 9 - Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

In his current analysis, unless there is a major scandal or failure, Lichtman says the keys favor Bush. Only a “daring, innovative, and programmatic campaign” by Kerry could help the challenger break out of the rut he has fallen into with his bland and, to Lichtman, misguided campaign.

In Lichtman’s view, Kerry is playing it safe. And playing it safe doesn’t pay.

-compiled from information Sally Acharya, American Weekly staff writer, and Maralee Csellar, AU Media Relations

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