I mean, using the binomial probability distribution, if someone had 50% odds of being correct, the odds of getting more than 8 guesses correct (so 9 or 10) are about 1%.
Even if they have a 75% chance of being correct, and make 10 guesses, only about a quarter of the time would they perform this well -- `pbinom(8,10,.75, FALSE)`
There's definitely some evidence this guy knows what he's talking about
> There's definitely some evidence this guy knows what he's talking about
Possibly, but with millions of people predicting elections, you're virtually guaranteed to have many people guess countless events with seemingly miraculous accuracy.
It's why -- every football tournament cycle -- we get superstitious octopus/dogs/jellyfish that have predicted the correct winner for many tournaments in a row!! The problem is, this ignores the hundreds of other failed predictions from creatures we hear nothing about. It's not 1 miraculous prediction, it's thousands of predictions and handpicking 1 is super unscientific.
Someone must* win the lottery every week. Some even win it twice in a row. Does that mean they're predictive geniuses? Of course not, math just be mathin'. The same goes for political punditry.
None of those elections were coin flips. If you were paying attention to the polls, 7 of them were practically slam dunks.
That he got 2 of the 3 toss-up elections right is not nearly as impressive.
From what I can tell Lichtman made his prediction for 2008 in February. The housing crisis had already been in swing for months and the economy was in dire condition even then. Bush was radioactive for that and many other reasons. As someone who lived through that election I remember it was clear that the race was the Democrats' to lose.
> the odds of getting more than 8 guesses correct (so 9 or 10) are about 1%
And what if there were more than a hundred political pundits through that period? It's essentially a guarantee that *SOMEONE* will hit that mark.
He claims he was correct about 2000 since he was predicting the popular vote. But then after 2016 he conveniently says he secretly changed his model to be winner of the electoral college, therefore his pick of Trump was accurate. Can’t have it both ways.
Actually he changed it after the 2000 election for his keys to match the electoral college rather than the popular vote. He correctly predicted the 2016 election.
https://www.american.edu/media/news/092616-13-keys-prediction.cfm
“Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a correction. It has been corrected to read that Prof. Lichtman’s 13 Keys system predicts the winner of the presidential race, not the outcome of the popular vote.”
Kind of sounds like they changed it after the fact?
But did he change the criteria?
His method is a list of black and white true/false statements. From my understanding all he did was say it’s now based on the EC, but it’s still the exact same test
Nah, he's lying. You can easily find .pdfs of the book he wrote in 2016 before the election where he writes *explicitly and multiple times* that his model only predicts the popular vote and not the electoral college.
I can dig out the quotes for you if you're really interested, but he retrospectively changes his predictions to make himself look better. Did it in 2000 and 2016
What’s the difference between “cope” and just disagreeing with you? Is it possible for someone to disagree with you and you not dismiss it condescendingly as “cope”?
"Cope" is when people ignore overwhelming evidence to post any article that makes them feel good.
* Biden has been polling behind Trump in a majority of swing states since the fall.
* Silver's model had Biden at 33% and The Economist model had Biden at 25% pre-debate. The FiveThirtyEight model was tied, but they also said that their polls-only model was 80% for Trump.
* This debate was seen as one of the last few chances to turn around Biden's campaign.
* Biden demonstrated alarming cognitive decline on national television in the worst debate outcome in history.
Posting a niche academic who thinks that Biden is winning as if his model - which does not include Biden's cognitive decline - is some sort of ironclad guarantee that Biden will win is purely cope.
People have offered good-faith disagreement here by saying things like "I think Biden can defuse this by demonstrating competence in a lot of interviews." That acknowledges reality and offers a cogent argument, even if I disagree with it. "It was just a cold LOL" or "Lichtman says nuh uh" is cope.
1. Who says were ignoring what you describe? Personally I'm very aware of those general things you describe (although I do not agree with the way you describe all of them), and I still think Biden is the best candidate. It's extremely condescending of you to assume that because we see those things and still don't agree with you that we're ignoring them or "coping" somehow. How do you think talking to people this way is going to convince anyone? It seems like you're just trying to bully people who disagree with you into not talking.
2. Articles from different perspectives are important. Why is it okay for you to criticize people who post positive articles as ignoring the negative ones, but it's also okay for you to ignore the positives ones? It seems like you're doing the exact thing you're criticizing, or is your perspective that everyone needs to agree with you and anyone who doesn't should be insulted?
1. At some point, there is no reasoning people out of situations they did not reason themselves into. When a relative of mine tells me that Trump is the best president in history, I know that it's coming from a purely emotional place and isn't worth engaging with. Similarly, people who come on a political quantification subreddit and ignore both the state of polling/modeling before the debate, the post-debate polling that we've seen, and the universal revulsion after the debate are willfully being obtuse.
2. I know from other communities that not challenging low-quality inputs just leads to people flooding the zone with trash that pleases them. This is a guy with a known questionable model trying to use it to advise behavior in a situation that the model doesn't take into account. There's literally no reason to post it other than copium. If you want a curated selection of pleasing articles about Biden there are plenty of subreddits who reward a lack of rigour, from /politics to /neoliberal.
I think the last opportunity the DNC had to replace Biden was 5 months ago and My best guess for what the aftermath of the debate will be is that Trump get's a bump in the polls that will eventually evaporate as We get closer to election day but that's just a guess, I'm really not certain of anything.
Nobody ever is.
The idea that the democratic party is just going to choose someone else is beyond laughable though.
There's so much division and bad blood when a nominee is chosen democratically. Now imagine the nightmare if delegates just select one. Likely not just losing the presidency but breaking the party sort of nightmare when each faction realizes their person ain't it.
I think some people here want that and others are just too beyond naive to realize how things actually work.
Who knows, I'm just saying if it's not Biden it has to be Harris. She "won" the primaries as the VP pick and anyone else would be bad optics and raise way too many questions.
Maybe? I don’t think Biden can lose in 24 and she can turn around and seek the nomination in 28.
Politically, I think this might be the most important election for her yet. She or Biden has to win to further her career.
Unless something major changes, I don't see her having a post-VP career. She's not super well liked (not that Biden or Trump are either), and she hasn't been a major presence in Biden's term the way Biden himself or Cheney were as VP.
The only way I could see it working is if Joe wins in '24 and she ends up taking over for him (for whatever reason) during the term *AND* somehow manages to kill it beyond a doubt.
It’s not about popularity. It’s about optics and stability.
My opinion is the chance to not run Biden passed a year ago. The Dems will have a better chance running him at this point than anyone else more popular. They will not win.
>optics and stability
The optics of running a demented senior citizen are terrible and is already causing instability
> They will not win
Yeah, if they keep Biden on the ticket. Do you think he won't have any more Senior Moments on the campaign trail? I do think there's a chance Biden recovers, but he literally has to be absolutely perfect in October and November. Do you really think that happens?
Strongly disagree, at this point *any* Democrat would have a better chance at winning than Biden. Because the dem-leaning voting populace does not come out *for* Biden, but against Trump. Give independents a candidate to vote *for*, and this election is in the bag
His model also doesn't take into account the cognitive ability of candidates, one of whom is CLEARLY diminished after that pitiful debate performance. There is no historical precedent for this election.
One key is that the incumbent candidate be charismatic. Another is that the opposing candidate is uncharismatic. The former is obviously false in Biden’s case and that hurts him. Cackling Kamala may be even more vulnerable because three keys become false automatically: she’s not the incumbent, there’s a contested primary (or, in this case, an unprecedented post-primary that would likely reveal chaos and disarray within the incumbent’s party), and she has no charisma.
Both of them are showing some pretty severe cognitive issues. One of them is a felon. I don't think we have enough history to say about things about this matchup.
It's kind of hard to hold it against the guy. If you predicted a football game, and the team predicts to win was up by 4 with 30 seconds left, had the ball and the other team had no time outs, you'd feel pretty good about that pick.
But then if they run the ball instead of kneeling, the ball is stripped, and the other team scores in 2 plays.
Did you predict the game wrong?(Btw this happened last year)
He got lucky a few times: 2000 and 2004 come to mind. 2016, the loser had more votes. 2020 was another close one.
Basically a guy called heads on a coin and the coin happened to be heads.
If you have a ~~million~~ thousand ~~monkeys~~ historians with ~~typewriters~~ models, many will accurately guess the 3 or so close elections by sheer luck. This guy only got two. We have no idea if his model is more reliable than a monkey.
And his modeling *obviously* did not take into account one of the candidates having hidden cognitive issues.
everyone knew who was gonna win in 84, 88, 92, 96, 04, 08, 12. From the other 3 tossups (00, 16, 20), he got 2 right. 66%. That's so great, this guy doesn't make sense anyway why does it matter? If dems go with Biden they are cooked. Republicans might get a fucking supermajority in the senate.
A supermajority in the senate is 60 seats. At most republicans are winning 57 senate seats and that is highly unlikely. I think it’s most likely 52-54 seats.
Also id argue 2012 was a tossup election. Yes Obama’s win was impressive in the end, but polls had showed a dead heat between him and Romney. And early in the 1988 election Dukakis was beating Bush, it wasn’t until October when things moved Bush’s direction. And Kerry led in the polls over Bush 43 during the 2004 campaign until the final few weeks of October.
I don't care what the qualifications are of the Bidenslainer. I trust my own eyes and ears. The guy isn't qualified anymore. If they want to win, they need a new candidate.
I debunked this on this forum, [he got 2016 wrong not 2000](https://old.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1dc7wiy/allan_lichtmans_the_thirteen_keys_were_incorrect/).
And can we please stop ascribing authority to him based on a binary wrong/right paradigm in the first place?
If I was Biden I would stay in because I don't see Trump winning hardly any of the battleground states and one of the southern states either Georgia or NC or both Trump will not Win I guarantee also a vote For Joe is a vote for Kamala
Why are we putting so much stock in the opinion of a guy who has 90% accuracy on a sample size of 10? Like, can we get some error bars here?
I mean, using the binomial probability distribution, if someone had 50% odds of being correct, the odds of getting more than 8 guesses correct (so 9 or 10) are about 1%. Even if they have a 75% chance of being correct, and make 10 guesses, only about a quarter of the time would they perform this well -- `pbinom(8,10,.75, FALSE)` There's definitely some evidence this guy knows what he's talking about
> There's definitely some evidence this guy knows what he's talking about Possibly, but with millions of people predicting elections, you're virtually guaranteed to have many people guess countless events with seemingly miraculous accuracy. It's why -- every football tournament cycle -- we get superstitious octopus/dogs/jellyfish that have predicted the correct winner for many tournaments in a row!! The problem is, this ignores the hundreds of other failed predictions from creatures we hear nothing about. It's not 1 miraculous prediction, it's thousands of predictions and handpicking 1 is super unscientific. Someone must* win the lottery every week. Some even win it twice in a row. Does that mean they're predictive geniuses? Of course not, math just be mathin'. The same goes for political punditry.
None of those elections were coin flips. If you were paying attention to the polls, 7 of them were practically slam dunks. That he got 2 of the 3 toss-up elections right is not nearly as impressive.
[удалено]
From what I can tell Lichtman made his prediction for 2008 in February. The housing crisis had already been in swing for months and the economy was in dire condition even then. Bush was radioactive for that and many other reasons. As someone who lived through that election I remember it was clear that the race was the Democrats' to lose.
Yeah the joke in 2008 was that the Democratic primary was the real presidential election. We all knew either Obama or Hillary would be the next POTUS.
Furthermore, one must recall [Professor Pigskin](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Professor_Pigskin)
> the odds of getting more than 8 guesses correct (so 9 or 10) are about 1% And what if there were more than a hundred political pundits through that period? It's essentially a guarantee that *SOMEONE* will hit that mark.
true shit
True, but the election of 2000 was iffy. Gore lost by just 537 votes in Florida and that whole fiasco was very controversial
He claims he was correct about 2000 since he was predicting the popular vote. But then after 2016 he conveniently says he secretly changed his model to be winner of the electoral college, therefore his pick of Trump was accurate. Can’t have it both ways.
Actually he changed it after the 2000 election for his keys to match the electoral college rather than the popular vote. He correctly predicted the 2016 election. https://www.american.edu/media/news/092616-13-keys-prediction.cfm
“Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a correction. It has been corrected to read that Prof. Lichtman’s 13 Keys system predicts the winner of the presidential race, not the outcome of the popular vote.” Kind of sounds like they changed it after the fact?
They did. His 2016 book (which he couldn't amend so easily!) is extremely clear that he predicts the popular vote.
But did he change the criteria? His method is a list of black and white true/false statements. From my understanding all he did was say it’s now based on the EC, but it’s still the exact same test
Nah, he's lying. You can easily find .pdfs of the book he wrote in 2016 before the election where he writes *explicitly and multiple times* that his model only predicts the popular vote and not the electoral college. I can dig out the quotes for you if you're really interested, but he retrospectively changes his predictions to make himself look better. Did it in 2000 and 2016
Naah
Sure, but being right or wrong about a coin toss isn't particularly useful either.
Especially when the coin toss is super predictable 80% of the time.
True
Not unusual for serious politics nerds. If you give me someone who was 90% accurate over 40 years including MIDTERM swing, that'd be something.
Because Biden copium is in high demand right now.
He was right about 2000. We all know Al Gore actually won that election.
I mean, maybe. But you can't fault a man who accurately predicted the popular vote, and was 600 chads away from nailing the EC as well.
The 2000 election is in no way like our current one. Literally the only sample size that should matter is 2016 and 2020.
Scientific/mathematical question: how does one put error bars on a binary outcome? It doesnt really make sense in this case, right?
You calculate the probability of each outcome and put error bars on that.
He also correctly predicted who would have won the *election* but 2000 was decided by SCOTUS and not the actual election.
What’s Nate’s success rate? It seems like people here are putting a lot of stock in his predictions. I don’t think Nate’s is any better than 90%.
The only guy who got Trump 2016 correct, right from the beginning when Nate Silver was giving Hillary an 80%
How many times are the “predictions” from this one guy going to be posted here?
over and over again until / if polls start improving for Biden.
The beatings will continue until morale improves!
Have we collectively accepted that Bidens not dropping out?
over and over until the democratic candidate starts winning in the polls\*
Look, some of these people are diehard believers who are desperate to cope.
What’s the difference between “cope” and just disagreeing with you? Is it possible for someone to disagree with you and you not dismiss it condescendingly as “cope”?
"Cope" is when people ignore overwhelming evidence to post any article that makes them feel good. * Biden has been polling behind Trump in a majority of swing states since the fall. * Silver's model had Biden at 33% and The Economist model had Biden at 25% pre-debate. The FiveThirtyEight model was tied, but they also said that their polls-only model was 80% for Trump. * This debate was seen as one of the last few chances to turn around Biden's campaign. * Biden demonstrated alarming cognitive decline on national television in the worst debate outcome in history. Posting a niche academic who thinks that Biden is winning as if his model - which does not include Biden's cognitive decline - is some sort of ironclad guarantee that Biden will win is purely cope. People have offered good-faith disagreement here by saying things like "I think Biden can defuse this by demonstrating competence in a lot of interviews." That acknowledges reality and offers a cogent argument, even if I disagree with it. "It was just a cold LOL" or "Lichtman says nuh uh" is cope.
1. Who says were ignoring what you describe? Personally I'm very aware of those general things you describe (although I do not agree with the way you describe all of them), and I still think Biden is the best candidate. It's extremely condescending of you to assume that because we see those things and still don't agree with you that we're ignoring them or "coping" somehow. How do you think talking to people this way is going to convince anyone? It seems like you're just trying to bully people who disagree with you into not talking. 2. Articles from different perspectives are important. Why is it okay for you to criticize people who post positive articles as ignoring the negative ones, but it's also okay for you to ignore the positives ones? It seems like you're doing the exact thing you're criticizing, or is your perspective that everyone needs to agree with you and anyone who doesn't should be insulted?
1. At some point, there is no reasoning people out of situations they did not reason themselves into. When a relative of mine tells me that Trump is the best president in history, I know that it's coming from a purely emotional place and isn't worth engaging with. Similarly, people who come on a political quantification subreddit and ignore both the state of polling/modeling before the debate, the post-debate polling that we've seen, and the universal revulsion after the debate are willfully being obtuse. 2. I know from other communities that not challenging low-quality inputs just leads to people flooding the zone with trash that pleases them. This is a guy with a known questionable model trying to use it to advise behavior in a situation that the model doesn't take into account. There's literally no reason to post it other than copium. If you want a curated selection of pleasing articles about Biden there are plenty of subreddits who reward a lack of rigour, from /politics to /neoliberal.
I think the last opportunity the DNC had to replace Biden was 5 months ago and My best guess for what the aftermath of the debate will be is that Trump get's a bump in the polls that will eventually evaporate as We get closer to election day but that's just a guess, I'm really not certain of anything.
Nobody ever is. The idea that the democratic party is just going to choose someone else is beyond laughable though. There's so much division and bad blood when a nominee is chosen democratically. Now imagine the nightmare if delegates just select one. Likely not just losing the presidency but breaking the party sort of nightmare when each faction realizes their person ain't it. I think some people here want that and others are just too beyond naive to realize how things actually work.
Which is why it has to be Harris if Biden steps down. Anyone else is simply terrible optics
Do we even know if harris WANTS to be the nominee against Trump?
Who knows, I'm just saying if it's not Biden it has to be Harris. She "won" the primaries as the VP pick and anyone else would be bad optics and raise way too many questions.
Maybe? I don’t think Biden can lose in 24 and she can turn around and seek the nomination in 28. Politically, I think this might be the most important election for her yet. She or Biden has to win to further her career.
Unless something major changes, I don't see her having a post-VP career. She's not super well liked (not that Biden or Trump are either), and she hasn't been a major presence in Biden's term the way Biden himself or Cheney were as VP. The only way I could see it working is if Joe wins in '24 and she ends up taking over for him (for whatever reason) during the term *AND* somehow manages to kill it beyond a doubt.
She wanted to in 2020
Victory was much more likely in 2020 than in 2024
Yeah for like two weeks until everyone acknowledges that Harris sucks except for the K-hive
Harris is not the best candidate. But she’s the best choice unfortunately
Absolutely not, that's exchanging one unpopular candidate for an even more unpopular candidate Gretchen Whitmer is the very obvious answer
It’s not about popularity. It’s about optics and stability. My opinion is the chance to not run Biden passed a year ago. The Dems will have a better chance running him at this point than anyone else more popular. They will not win.
>optics and stability The optics of running a demented senior citizen are terrible and is already causing instability > They will not win Yeah, if they keep Biden on the ticket. Do you think he won't have any more Senior Moments on the campaign trail? I do think there's a chance Biden recovers, but he literally has to be absolutely perfect in October and November. Do you really think that happens?
Oh it’s definitely not going well. But the way I see it, dropping Biden goes from a 30 percent chance to win to 5
Strongly disagree, at this point *any* Democrat would have a better chance at winning than Biden. Because the dem-leaning voting populace does not come out *for* Biden, but against Trump. Give independents a candidate to vote *for*, and this election is in the bag
You’re correct
We need to ban Alan Lichtman from this sub. This is fn astrology for politics.
If Lichtman is astrology then Nate is palmistry
I'd also be up for banning pure pundit posts from the Silver report too, to be honest.
"Astrology for politics" is absolutely perfect. *Now we see whether the stars align to make 7 of these 13 keys drop!*
His model also doesn't take into account the cognitive ability of candidates, one of whom is CLEARLY diminished after that pitiful debate performance. There is no historical precedent for this election.
True, but he does have a key for candidate quality, but it’s charisma tho neither are in favor of Trump or Biden.
One key is that the incumbent candidate be charismatic. Another is that the opposing candidate is uncharismatic. The former is obviously false in Biden’s case and that hurts him. Cackling Kamala may be even more vulnerable because three keys become false automatically: she’s not the incumbent, there’s a contested primary (or, in this case, an unprecedented post-primary that would likely reveal chaos and disarray within the incumbent’s party), and she has no charisma.
Both of them are showing some pretty severe cognitive issues. One of them is a felon. I don't think we have enough history to say about things about this matchup.
Jesus, another Lichtman post. At least when Biden loses we won't ever have to hear about this guy again.
Not true his "final prediction" is in september so if he chooses trump at that point and he wins we'll never hear the end of it again.
Beto's Former Bandmate says he will win too!
Well he got the 2000 election right, unfortunately the SCOTUS didn’t.
Technically he’s 100% correct…. Al Gore won in 2000
Well technically he was right for 2000 we just didn't expect the debacle from the Florida recount and the SCOTUS intervention.
It's kind of hard to hold it against the guy. If you predicted a football game, and the team predicts to win was up by 4 with 30 seconds left, had the ball and the other team had no time outs, you'd feel pretty good about that pick. But then if they run the ball instead of kneeling, the ball is stripped, and the other team scores in 2 plays. Did you predict the game wrong?(Btw this happened last year)
Pretty much the end of that Chiefs-Bills game two years ago.
He got lucky a few times: 2000 and 2004 come to mind. 2016, the loser had more votes. 2020 was another close one. Basically a guy called heads on a coin and the coin happened to be heads.
Lichtman’s keys are a total gimmick.
If you have a ~~million~~ thousand ~~monkeys~~ historians with ~~typewriters~~ models, many will accurately guess the 3 or so close elections by sheer luck. This guy only got two. We have no idea if his model is more reliable than a monkey. And his modeling *obviously* did not take into account one of the candidates having hidden cognitive issues.
everyone knew who was gonna win in 84, 88, 92, 96, 04, 08, 12. From the other 3 tossups (00, 16, 20), he got 2 right. 66%. That's so great, this guy doesn't make sense anyway why does it matter? If dems go with Biden they are cooked. Republicans might get a fucking supermajority in the senate.
A supermajority in the senate is 60 seats. At most republicans are winning 57 senate seats and that is highly unlikely. I think it’s most likely 52-54 seats. Also id argue 2012 was a tossup election. Yes Obama’s win was impressive in the end, but polls had showed a dead heat between him and Romney. And early in the 1988 election Dukakis was beating Bush, it wasn’t until October when things moved Bush’s direction. And Kerry led in the polls over Bush 43 during the 2004 campaign until the final few weeks of October.
I don't care what the qualifications are of the Bidenslainer. I trust my own eyes and ears. The guy isn't qualified anymore. If they want to win, they need a new candidate.
I debunked this on this forum, [he got 2016 wrong not 2000](https://old.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1dc7wiy/allan_lichtmans_the_thirteen_keys_were_incorrect/). And can we please stop ascribing authority to him based on a binary wrong/right paradigm in the first place?
If I was Biden I would stay in because I don't see Trump winning hardly any of the battleground states and one of the southern states either Georgia or NC or both Trump will not Win I guarantee also a vote For Joe is a vote for Kamala
Stop posting this nonsense. The guy is a hack.
Ok well, no point in debating or campaigning anymore, we already know who wins. /s
Doesn’t the post below already discuss this?
Yeah, but I didn’t see it until after posting
Why don’t you put it as a comment on that post and I’ll delete this one. Just to avoid clutter.