8/5/2020 Keys to the White House – PollyVote

Keys to the White House

The Keys to the White House, developed by Allan Lichtman

(http://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/lichtman.cfm), is a
system for predicting the popular-vote result of American
presidential elections, based upon the theory of pragmatic
voting. America’s electorate, according to this theory,
chooses a president, not according to events of the
campaign, but according to how well the party in control of
the White House has governed the country. If the voters are
content with the party in power, it gains four more years in
the White House; if not, the challenging party prevails. Thus, the choice of a president does not turn on debates,
advertising, speeches, endorsements, rallies, platforms, promises, or campaign tactics. Rather, presidential
elections are primarily referenda on the performance of the party holding the White House.

Method

Lichtman rst developed the Keys system in 1981, in collaboration with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, founder of the
International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics. The methodology used in the
development of the Keys is described in Keilis-Borok and Lichtman (1981) and Lichtman (2008, 2010a). As shown in
Table 1, each of the thirteen keys is stated as a threshold condition that always favors the re-election of the party
holding the White House. For example, Key 5 is phrased as “The economy is not in recession during the election
campaign.” Each key can then be assessed as true or false prior to an upcoming election and the winner predicted
according to a simple decision rule. Unlike other systems for predicting election results, the Keys do not assume a
xed relationship between election results and one more dependent variables, such as economic growth or
presidential approval ratings. Rather predictions are based on an index comprised of the number of false or negative
keys: When ve or fewer keys are false, the incumbent party wins; when any six or more are false, the challenging
party wins.

Table 1: The 13 Keys to the White House and their coding (http://hubpages.com/politics/Predicting-the-2016-Election-the-13-Keys-to-the-White-
House) (1: True; 0: False) for 2016

Key Topic Threshold condition Coding

1 Party Mandate After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats inthe U.S. House of
Representatives than it did after the previousmidterm elections.

2 Contest There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.

3 Incumbency The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.
4 Third party There is no signi cant third party or independent campaign.

5 Short-term The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

economy

6 Long-term Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the
economy previous two terms.
7 Policy change The incumbent administration e ects major changes in national policy.

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

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Table 2: Published predictions of the Keys model for the Elections from 1984 to 2008

Election Forecast date Source

1988 May 1988 “How to Bet in November”, Washingtonian Magazine, May 1988

1992 September 1992 “The Keys to the White House”, Montgomery Journal, September 14, 1992
1996 October 1996 “Who Will Be the Next President?”, Social Education, October 1996

2000 November 1999 “The Keys to Election 2000”, Social Education, November/December 1999.

2004 April 2003 “The Keys to the White House”, Montgomery Gazette, Apr. 25, 2003
2008 February 2006 “Forecast for 2008”, Foresight, Feb. 2006

2012 January 2010 “The Keys to the White House: A Preliminary Forecast for 2012”, International Journal of Information
Systems and Social Change, 1(1), 31-43

2016 December 2015 Predicting 2016: What the “13 Keys to the White House” Say and Why Foreign Policy Will Decide the
Next President (http://hubpages.com/politics/Predicting-the-2016-Election-the-13-Keys-to-
the-White-House)
September 2016 Trump is headed for a win, says professor who has predicted 30 years of presidential outcomes
correctly (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- x/wp/2016/09/23/trump-is-headed-for-
a-win-says-professor-whos-predicted-30-years-of-presidential-outcomes-correctly/?
postshare=2541474654865044&tid=ss_tw)

REFERENCES

Armstrong, J. S. & A. G. Cuzán (2006). Index methods for forecasting: An application to the American presidential
elections, (http://uwf.edu/govt/documents/FS0206ArmstrongCuzan.pdf)Foresight
(http://uwf.edu/govt/documents/FS0206ArmstrongCuzan.pdf): The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, (2006,
3), 10-13.
Keilis-Borok, V. I. & Lichtman, A. J. (1981). Pattern Recognition Applied to Presidential Elections in the United
States (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC349231/pdf/pnas00662-0692.pdf), 1860-1980: The Role
of Integral Social, Economic, and Political Traits, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 78 (November
1981), 7230-7234.
Lichtman, A. J. (2006). The Keys to the White House: Forecast for 2008, Foresight: The International Journal of
Applied Forecasting, 3, (February 2006), 5-9.
Lichtman, A. J. (2008). The Keys to the White House, 2008 Edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little eld.
Lichtman, A. J. (2010). The Keys to the White House:  A Preliminary Forecast for 2012” International Journal Of
Information Systems & Social Change 1 (Jan.-March 2010).

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Table 1: The 13 Keys to the White House and their coding (http://hubpages.com/politics/Predicting-the-2016-Election-the-13-Keys-to-the-White-
House) (1: True; 0: False) for 2016

Key Topic Threshold condition Coding

9 Scandal The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

10 Foreign/military The incumbent administration su ers no major failure in foreign or military a airs.
failure
11 Foreign/military The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military a airs.
success
12 Incumbent The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
charisma
13 Challenger The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
charisma

2016 forecast

In his forecast published December 13, 2015 (http://hubpages.com/politics/Predicting-the-2016-Election-the-13-

Keys-to-the-White-House), Lichtman coded ve keys as false. Thus, the Keys model predicts that the
Democrats will secure re-election in 2016. In order to translate this forecast into a forecast of the incumbent’s
popular two-party vote (V), PollyVote uses the number of Keys coded as True as the single predictor in a simple
linear regression model that is estimated based on historical data from 1860 to 2012. This approach was suggested in
Armstrong & Cuzán (2006). The regression yielded the following vote equation:

V = 37.2 + 1.8 *  True = 37.2 + 1.8 * =

That is, the Keys model predicts the incumbent Democrats to gain 49.7% of the two-party popular vote
(Republicans: 50.3%). The complete data for this forecast can be accessed here
(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hCU_L8k PqHbzcc_bRNG9mgLOZOh0EKj3EKbvjDJIs/pubhtml?
gid=1806392468&single=true). You can also compute your own forecast by modifying the coding in the green
highlighted cells in Table 2.

Past performance

Retrospectively, the keys model accounts for the outcome of

every American presidential election since 1860, much longer
than any other prediction system. Prospectively, the Keys to the
White House has correctly forecast the popular vote winner of all
seven presidential elections from 1984 to 2012, usually months
or even years prior to Election Day. The chart to the right shows
the Keys model’s vote share forecasts in comparison to the
actual vote for the incumbent party’s candidate in each of those
election. On average, the Keys model missed the nal election
result by 2.4 percentage points. Table 2 reports the rst
published predictions based on the Keys for the elections of 1984 through 2016.

Table 2: Published predictions of the Keys model for the Elections from 1984 to 2008

Election Forecast date Source

1984 April 1982 “How to Bet in ’84”, Washingtonian Magazine, April 1982

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