Posted on 10/05/2016 10:26:40 AM PDT by mandaladon
(Reuters) - The forces influencing the U.S. presidential election favor Republican nominee Donald Trump to win the popular vote - but even proven prediction models face "the most difficult election by far to predict accurately," a political forecaster with a three-decade winning streak said on Wednesday.
History Professor Allan Lichtman of American University in Washington has accurately predicted the popular result in presidential elections since Republican President Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984.
Although the number of ballots cast by voters for each candidate counts, it does not ultimately determine who takes the White House. In a process known as the Electoral College, the candidate who wins a majority of 538 electoral votes is the victor. Each state and the District of Columbia is allocated a certain number of those votes, and the candidates have to amass them state-by-state on Election Day.
While Lichtman's "Keys to the White House" analysis predicts a popular victory by Trump, some other models, such as FiveThirtyEight's and The New York Times', have given Democratic rival Hillary Clinton a large probability of victory.
Lichtman joined Reuters Global Markets Forum to discuss his take on Campaign 2016. What follows are excerpts from that conversation.
Question: Why is Trump your favorite to win?
Answer: With respect to my prediction, my "Keys" system is based on 13 true/false questions where an answer of "true" favors re-election of the White House party - the Democrats. They have exactly six "false" keys against them, just enough to predict their defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
The “butt hurt” is starting to build.
Clinton vs. Trump? No, It’s the Media vs. America
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/23800-clinton-vs-trump-no-it-s-the-media-vs-america
The “verdict of history” favors Mr. Trump.
Does this pinhead think “the verdict of history” is that Americans must lose their country?
I can’t take anyone seriously who predicted Mondale over Reagan. Gore over Bush? Yeah, I can see it. Mondale over Reagan?
Exactly the words I've been looking for. Those words were used to describe the 1980 race. And then 48 hours before people went to the polls, the undecideds broke overwhelmingly for Reagan.
If you read his “Key Questions” Democrats lose on all 13
Because all presidents lately have been politicians or lawyers.
Why do I get the impression that the author is talking to me as if I were a small child?
Allan Lichtman is a tool.
If this fellow had studied history he would know that it rarely renders a permanent verdict on anything.
The historical verdict is in. We must become a third world communist hellhole, for some reason.
I’ve said it a million times: Nothing Trump could do as President will be as important as him actually winning the election.
A Trump win would be a death blow to the Left.
At worst, with Trump we get four years of Gridlock.
More importantly, a Trump loss may result in some very, very nasty days ahead for elected officials on BOTH sides of the aisle...people are getting very, very tired of the government.
Not to mention what it would do to the space-time continuum!
Given the track record of Congress, I’d be all for a little gridlock.
The headline writer got it exactly backwards, didn't he?
Lichtman's saying his system predicts a narrow victory for Trump.
But Trump could still "upset the verdict of history and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
Of course, Lichtmann's a liberal and even ran in a Maryland Democratic senatorial primary, and of course, he doesn't want Trump to win.
But it doesn't look like many people read the article -- including the website that put it on line.
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