MARKET WATCH
Recent polling news has been very promising for Donald Trump. But with nine months still to go in the presidential race, American University professor Allan Lichtman says Joe Biden holds an edge according to the historical “keys” to victory.
For now, anyway.
Five of the 13 historical predictors of victory favor Biden, while three favor Trump, and the rest are still up for grabs, Lichtman told MarketWatch in an interview.
That leaves the Democrats praying that foreign policy and the economy will go the president’s way in the months ahead — and that there isn’t a strong third-party campaign.
Lichtman, now 77, coined the “Keys to the White House” phrase in a popular book first published in the early 1980s. These “keys” consist of 13 indicators that supposedly determine the outcomes of presidential elections. Lichtman argues they have held good since at least 1860.
At one notable moment in recent history, the “keys” predicted Donald Trump’s victory in November 2016 — against all the conventional wisdom and most polling.
This time around, Lichtman says, President Biden is an incumbent running for re-election (Key No. 3), has not faced a serious challenge for his party’s nomination (Key No. 2) and has made major policy changes (Key No. 7).
(The keys make no judgment about whether the policy changes undertaken are for the better.)
And the long-term economic trend is running Biden’s way: “Real” — or after-inflation — per capita economic growth over the past four years has equaled or exceeded the average growth rate during the previous two presidential terms (Key No. 6).
It has, too. I ran the numbers. Based on International Monetary Fund data, the U.S. economy is on track to post average real growth of 2.5% per person during the 2021–25 presidential term. The average from 2012 to 2020? Just under 1%.
No contest. (And, once again, for this exercise it doesn’t matter why.)
More contentious is Key No. 13: “The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.” Clearly, to some (even many), Trump is just that. Lichtman, to be fair, is no fan of Trump and is a Democrat. But he argues that this 13th key refers only to broadly bipartisan or national heroes à la, say, Eisenhower.
On the other hand, Lichtman notes, two or three of these indicators clearly favor Trump. After the 2022 midterm elections, the Democrats hold fewer seats in Congress than they did after the previous midterms, in 2018 (Key No. 1). And Biden, per Lichtman, is neither charismatic nor a national hero (No. 12).
It would be hard to point to any “major foreign policy or military success” under this administration (No. 11).
Foreign and military success or failure appears twice on Lichtman’s list of keys: The incumbent party scores a point for a big success, and it can also lose a point for the absence of one…
