Monday, December 19, 2016

Predicting who becomes President

Finally got to do a quick survey of this book by professor Allan Lichtman. He has an unparalleled track record for predicting who won every presidential race since the 80s. His system is back tested all the way to the 1800s.

Very fascinating how he could come up with the thirteen keys. Looks deceptively simple but it takes a lot of work to use them correctly. I wonder why the political elites seem not to have paid much attention to his work and instead have always gravitated to polls. Except by luck they never worked. They ought to have leverage the wisdom of his system even if they cannot avoid those polls and media attention.

These thirteen keys can be found in Wikipedia.

By the way the prof also expect Trump to be impeached by Congress within the first year of being president. Just as well since Trump is a leopard which cannot change its spots.

Update: Dec 20 8:05 am

Basically if Prof Lichtman is right then a lot of things people worry and study about the presidential elections are unimportant and just wasteful distractions. Interestingly he never suggest Trump would be rejected by the Electoral College. His hunch is Trump would be impeached by Congress within a year. That is just hunch and not based on some equivalent model for predicting elections. But if you read his book you would realize he was simply hedging. A lot of systematic and rigorous thought must have gone into coming up with that "hunch". The man cannot stop being historian.

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