Magda Sakowska, Interia: How does your system entitled 13 Keys to the White House work, what is it based on?
Allan Lichtman, historian at American University: – My system of 13 keys to the White House does not rely on the predictions of experts whose opinions are not based on science, it does not rely on polls that are just a snapshot of a specific moment. We remember how the experts and polls were completely wrong in 2016, claiming that Hillary Clinton has the win in his pocket, and despite this common wisdom, I predicted that Donald Trump would win, which did not win me any friends among 90 percent of Democrats here in Washington.
My keys are unique. They delve into the structure of how American presidential elections really work, that it's an up or down vote, and the most powerful factor is how the party that currently has the president in the White House is doing. The main message of my system is – what matters is the quality of government, not the campaign.
If six or more of the 13 keys are against the party currently in power, then that party's candidate will lose. Fewer than six keys in the red means the party in the White House will win. And this system has been in place since April 1982, when I predicted a win Ronald Reagan in a re-election fight almost three years before the election and during a gigantic economic collapse, the worst since the Great Depression, and on top of that, 60 percent of Americans said Reagan was too old to run for re-election, and his poll ratings were at rock bottom.
So let's go through the key by key. The first one is the party mandate. This key is related to the midterm elections.
Yes, that's the first key. In the last midterm elections, the Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives, so this key is false, negative for them. Remember, six or more false keys mean a loss Wrong Harris. In the remaining scenarios, we predict a breakthrough, i.e. the first female president with both African and Asian roots, something that has never happened in American politics before.
This is already one false key. Next key – competition.
I admit that I was very nervous when the Democrats tried to push Joe Biden out of the race and when they did. In this way, the key about the incumbent candidate was put in the negative for them and there was also the possibility that they would turn the key about competition within the party against themselves, and losing those two keys could mean losing in November. But fortunately, the Democrats got their act together and united around Harris. So the key about the candidate having no competition is true.
Key Three: Holding Office
When Biden, who is in office, stopped being the candidate, the Democrats lost that key. That is, the second key in the minus.
The next key is the third party, meaning there is no other serious candidate other than the two main ones.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his campaign, he is no longer a significant element of the ongoing election campaign. The notion that he will now give votes to Trump is absurd. Those votes will simply be lost. So this key is a plus.
Now the key: The economy in the short term.
This is a key that is strongly based on specific statistics. The data shows that there is no recession in an election year and that there will be none in the next two months, which is a plus for the Democrats.
Long-term economics. The next key.
Examining whether real economic growth, GDP per capita is at least equal to what it was in the previous two administrations and as the statistics show, this growth has now doubled compared to the previous administrations. Another key on the plus side.
Key Seven: Policy Changes.
Gigantic changes when we compare the actions of the Biden and Trump administrations, for example in matters of climate, immigration. The current administration has returned to the Paris climate agreement. In addition, laws on infrastructure, semiconductor production. It is obvious that the Trump and Biden administrations differ in many ways, they are completely different. This key is true, i.e. it is positive.
The next key is scandal. Do you think the White House is embroiled in scandal?
For the past four years, Republicans have been trying to pin some scandal on President Biden and they have failed. Their key witness was even arrested by FBI for spreading lies about Biden and propagating Russian disinformation. The key concerns a scandal in which there is corruption and in which the sitting president is directly involved, and for this there must be bipartisan agreement that something bad is happening. Scandals involving the president's son, as in the case of Hunter Biden, or scandals involving the brother, as was the case with Jimmy Carter's brother Billy, are not enough. The key does not incriminate the Democrats.
Key social unrest.
This key was problematic, if events similar to those in 1968 occurred (when in Chicago during the Democratic convention there were huge protests against the war in Vietnam. There were clashes with the police and the National Guard. Riots broke out in the city – ed.), the Democrats could lose this key. However, nothing like that happened this year. The protests died down.
This is now foreign policy and the key: Failure in this area.
Foreign policy keys are the most difficult to assess, because there are two wars going on, the wars are unpredictable, the situation is changing rapidly, but for now I consider the war in Gaza a failure of the current administration. It is a humanitarian catastrophe with no end in sight, and although there are no American soldiers on the ground, we are still very much involved in this conflict. Of course, we can imagine, although I doubt it will come to that, that Biden somehow manages to control this belligerence of Benjamin Netanyahu, to force Hamas to cooperate and bring about a ceasefire and the release of hostages. Possible, although unlikely, and that is why this is a disadvantageous key for the democrats, so we already have three keys in the red.
Another key is whether the ruling administration has achieved foreign policy or military success.
Success and failure are indeed two different keys to foreign policy and they are a good indicator of what is happening in the Biden administration. I believe that the actions towards Ukrainyis a success of this administration and I believe that they will be recorded in history. Biden and only Biden was the one who created the Western coalition whose actions did not allow To Vladimir Putin to conquer Ukraine and to continue our march towards our allies from NATO. Thanks to Biden's unwavering support, Ukraine has been fighting a much stronger adversary for more than two years, and recently even invaded the territory Russia. Of course, the situation is dynamic and can change dramatically, but for now this key is in favor of the Democrats.
The charisma of the ruling party's candidate.
You have to be that one-of-a-kind, one-in-many-generation, inspiring candidate, like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. Thinking about Harris, I don't think she's that now, so that's the fourth key downside for the Democrats.
The last key, examining what the opponent's charisma looks like.
Donald Trump he is a sensational showman. He has loyal supporters, but to meet the assumptions of this key, you have to be a truly outstanding, unique person who attracts people from different groups. Trump's influence is strong, but limited, because only on his biggest supporters. His average support during his four years as president is 41 percent, one of the lowest results in history. In the presidential election, he lost the popular vote twice (in the American electoral system, the candidate who receives fewer votes can still win the presidential election, because he collects the appropriate number of electoral votes – ed.), winning a total of 10 million fewer votes. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan won in a landslide. Whatever we think about Trump, he is neither Roosevelt nor Reagan. This key is a plus for the Democrats.
So we have four minus keys for the candidate of the ruling party, which is two too few to say that Donald Trump will return to the White House and Kamala Harris will lose. There is one unstable key – the one concerning success in foreign policy, but I do not think it will change. However, even if it did, there would still be too few keys against the Democrats to predict Harris' defeat, which is why I am convinced that we will have a president who is a woman of African-Asian roots.