Lichtman Cheats his Own 2020 Prediction Model by Plugging in Fake Facts (Trump will win!)

Free Republic ^ | September 6, 2020 | PoconoPundit

[poconopundit]

For many years, history professor Allan Lichtman's has gained fame predicting Presidential Elections through a Key Question model that has remained consistent since 1980. Lichtman has published his prediction methodology in a Wikipedia entry entitled, The Keys to The White House, which he claims has predicted the winner every time, with exception of his error predicting Al Gore's victory over Bush.  Before the 2016 Election, Lichtman predicted his model would have Trump win, but the devil in his model is how he interprets the facts plugged into the model.  I analyzed his analysis in a 2016 FR vanity: Professor Masks Evidence, Discredits Own Election Model in Trump Victory Prediction.

So I decided to critique his analysis for 2020 released in early August and found a New York Times video where you can hear Lichtman analyze his model for this year's election where he predicts a Biden victory. Now below I inserted my own answers and analysis based on Lichtman's model and I came up with a strong Trump victory using the exact same Key Questions.  So I leave it to you, dear FReepers, to compare the two interpretations and see which you believe. I assume Lichtman's model is a rather reliable predictor as long as the interpreter's bias is removed.  However, I now suspect Lichtman foresees his career as election guru coming to an end.  In my view he unfairly tipped this interpretation to Biden to please his Fake News masters.  The risk he takes is: if Trump should wins, then Lichtman's reputation is ruined. So the net effect is Lichtman is cheating his own prediction model with the dishonest facts he inserted into it.  In the end, Lichtman sold his soul for a few pieces of silver to the New York Times.  And for the Times, that's dandy because it's opportunity to knock President Trump down with a more subtle form of fake news.  Analysis of the 2020 Election Prediction OK, so how does his Election Prediction Model work? Well, there are 13 Keys statements that favor the re-election of the incumbent party.  The winner is determined as follows: The incumbent party (Trump) wins when 8 or more statements are true The challenging party (Biden) wins when 6 or more statements are false. So here's my own scoring of Lichtman's model for Election 2020, explaining where Lichtman judged differently. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S.  House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.  False, the Democrats gained the House in the 2018 mid-terms.  Some say that election cheating was a major reason the Republicans lost, particularly in Calfornia. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.  True, President Trump crushed the Republican nomination process with record primary voting for any incumbent.  Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.  True, the incumbent candidate, Trump, is the sitting president.  Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. True, there's little talk of third party candidates this year.  Kanye West is running in a few States, but is expected to take votes away from Biden and fewer from Trump.  Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. True, the economy is gaining steam fast as we get through the pandemic.  Jobs are making a strong recovery and the stock market is at an all-time high.  Lichtman disagrees. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. True, GDP made tremendous gains during Trump's time in office and is smartly jumping out of the Covid 19 crisis to surge again thanks to the country being the energy self-sufficient, strong manufacturing growth, control of our borders, strong tech & communications infrastructure,huge gain in the stock market, and trade deals such as the USMCA trade deals with Japan and China that will boost the prosperity of Americans. Despite all these successes, Lichtman claims all these gains were wiped out by Covid 19. Policy change: The incumbent administration causes major changes in national policy. True, Trump has massively changed our national policy -- securing our Southern Border, made progress in Middle East peace, vanquished ISIS, neutralized Iran, made the large tax cut in history, broadly repealed countless job-killing regulations, and built a very strong economy. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. False, The Antifa and BLM riots across the country have instigated 500 violent incidents in the past few months of the election season.  However, the President has clearly been on the side of Law and Order.  Meanwhile the Democrats and their accomplices in the national press until very recently were neglecting to even acknowledge that the violence was a problem.  The violence is occuring in Democrat cities, further hurting the challenger Biden.  Lichtman conveniently fails to discuss this inconsistency in his model with today's exception.  I think we can reasonably assume that Trump will win the Law & Order vote by a long shot. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. False. The President is tainted by endless scandals, all of them manufactured by the Democrats and the national press media.  Yet the credibility of each scandal has been proven wrong.  The Russia, Russia, Russian collusion story has been utterly discredited.  The Impeachment charges were soundly defeated. The "racist" charges of the Charlottesville controversy are proven wrong on video.  Yet the question remains: how many voters continue to be duped by the partisan media? Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. True.  Not a single foreign/military failure has occurred in Trump's first term, and this is inspite of Trump putting relentless pressure on foreign governments to change their policies.  Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. True.  The foreign/military successes of the Trump administration are many and significant.  Trump has struck many new trade deals advantageous to America.  He has destroyed the barbaric ISIS.  He's bringing an end to the war in Afghanistan.  He has brokered peace between Israel and the UAE, the economic power of the Arab nations.  He has quelled the threat of missile attack from North Korea and established a personal relationship with North Korea's leader.  Trump has also neutered Iran, severely hurting their ability to foment violence in the Middle East.  In spite of all these successes, Lichtman believes Trump cannot point to a single foreign success.  Kind of an unbelievable interpretation actually. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. True.  True, President Trump is the leader of the Free World and one of most charismatic U.S. Presidents in history.  He is a national business hero and for 15 years was the star of the hit NBC TV show, the Apprentice.  He is in the top 10 in the world ranking of followers on Twitter.  He has held scores of highly attended rallies across across the country.  Boat parades around the country are forming across the country where hundreds to thousands of boaters are flying the American flag and Trump banners.  In the face of all this, Lichtman, incredibly, is saying Trump is not charismatic because he believes half the country doesn't like him.  So I guess nobody can measure up to Lichtman's standard of charisma. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate, False Joe Biden, is neither charismatic nor a national hero.  Significant foreign scandals in Ukraine and China taint his candidacy.  And his lapses in memory and his lack of energy and ability to think clearly is forcing the Democrats to keep Biden away from the public and limit his exposure to challenges form the press. .  So when you take away the fake facts Lichtman inserted into his model, his prediction method clearly shows Trump will win.

[poconopundit]

True. Maybe in a few days I’ll report on Charlie Kirk’s analysis. It’s very good and I’m sure Freepers would love it.

[genghis]

Hood job

[Verginius Rufus]

Lichtman’s hatred of President Trump is pathological. Very early in the Trump administration he published a book calling for Trump’s impeachment.

[GOPJ]

bump for later

[GOPJ]

bump for later

https://www.podparadise.com/Podcast/1460600818/Listen/1599094800/0

[V K Lee]

Fear PP, you might need an editor? spellchecker?
However, do like your projection! A.L. is so full of
himself he waddles. And as for cheating, he is, after all,
more of a liberal than anything else so what should one expect?

[poconopundit]

OK, I wasn’t aware of that book. So he’s already known as a partisan. I guess the MSM money is lucrative for him.

He’s 74 years old, so he’s making one last run at the money before he retires.

[poconopundit]

Yes, I’ve got to do a better job of spotting errors. Well, at least the cost of my vanities is reasonable. A 50-Kbyte image even less text.

We had some good comments here. Plus I like the idea that the Free Republic puts a stake in the ground calling out the hypocrisy of the NYTimes, enemy of the people.

Being an industry analyst, I guess my fascination is with the model building itself.

And as I think of it, Lichtman is trying to shoehorn 13 questions into elections from 1860 to today — and that’s totally unrealistic.

Think how the country has changed since 1860. Women and Blacks gained the vote. The automobile and the shift from rural to suburban life. America became a global power. The internet circles the globe and social media/search engines have enormous influence as newspapers steadily decline.

As Liz mentioned, how do you take into account the dislike for people like Hillary Clinton or the obvious decline in brainpower of Sleepy Joe?

Each period in history — and each election — requires a readjustment of the variables and weights. Keeping the same model unchanged is foolish — though I must admit that I thought it could be done until just now :- )

[tinyowl]

Order can be modeled. Chaos can not - can only be characterized ... or you can un-particularize the model legos and form a kind of impressionist painting.

While it's true that mankind in general at times operates in part by a set of natural physical and chemical and biochemical principles and a so called 'rational process,' he does it by varying degrees and his highest function - thought - and then the ability to fool himself into believing the many thoughts that blend into beliefs and sequential stories - are the capital T truth ... what you REALLY have is a species best characterized as predictable in some particulars but completely crazy (chaos) when it comes to the big picture - what he arrives at as the capital T truth and then clings to as if the rightness or wrongness of the verity of his story are the equivalent of life and death itself - we are simply wired that way, and we are wired to believe the story our wiring tells us.

(In truth, we are not the 'I' that is pointed to when we use the word 'I', but we believe we are. This is of course a deeper discussion, but the lunacy hinges on it, as does the suffering caused by the lunacy. Garden of Eden and all that :-))

Anyway - Darwin means we don't need to make sense as a primary characteristic, we only need to make ENOUGH sense to create the next generation.

In that way, mankind can be characterized, as a whole, as a random and chaotic mental patient who in very few key areas makes enough sense to navigate the ward long enough to get another mental patient pregnant.

His own very existence makes no sense, that is, the very scope within which he is to try to make sense is senseless. This is not to say there is not holiness in that empty realm of scope. But holiness doesn't necessarily translate into the proper use of that holiness.

I dare you to model/predict the goings on in THAT ward for more than a week or so.

We like to call it 'civilizational structural changes over time,'sometimes we call it 'progress' and maybe to the extent that the species fares better on some levels it's progress, but at the root the species is still insane. I say that with affection.

I think he does get slowly more rational and awake, but boy does he cause himself a lot of suffering and (unpredicatable because it's ultimately random chaos - stream of cognitive associations attached to as 'the truth') drama. I don't here specifically call out the left, which certainly belongs in their own ward for the safety of others - but the whole ball of wax - the species and history called mankind -> it is a free for all violent loony bin characterized by 97% madness and 2.9% percent rational processes where occasionally, slowly, but maybe more and more often, relative beauty and orderly form breaks out, like a hockey game at a brawl.

Model THAT!

[Concentrate]

After all these years, I’m experimenting with the conclusion that there is no ONE truth after all.

As modern physics has shown us, it can be a particle or a wave, depending on how it is measured or observed.

In other words, it depends on how it is measured or observed.

I think that this concept is very hard to accept, that two or more truths can be simultaneously correct.(Depending on how the particular thing or philosophy, or whatever is observed)

[Yardstick]

I can kind of see why he gamed his model this time. It's because the media (and the Democrats, and the left in general) are totally off the rails this time, distorting everything Trump does. Essentially he's trying to factor in the unprecedented media bias and dishonesty without saying (or maybe realizing) that's what he's doing.

Consider the question of whether the administration achieves a major success in foreign/military affairs. This time around what he's really asking is does the public perceive the administration to have major success. He didn't need to add this unspoken qualifier before, but he does now, because thanks to the media there's such a gaping disconnect between actual reality and the reality being presented to the public--and unfortunately absorbed to a significant degree--that it has to be accounted for.

So IMO what the gamed model is really saying it is this: in normal times the reelection of Donald Trump would be a slam dunk, but these are not normal times...

[Concentrate]

For example, is there an anthropomorphized deity like Yahweh, Jesus or Krishna,or just the impersonal universal order of things?

Actually both might be true. Let that sink in for a while. :)

[USS Alaska]

Now below I inserted my own answers and analysis based on Lichtman's model and I came up with a strong Trump victory using the exact same Key Questions. So I leave it to you, dear FReepers, to compare the two interpretations and see which you believe.

You are 100% correct. Lichtmann sold out for

And then he hanged himself.

[KavMan]

Lichtman is a TRUMP hater! When I see him on TV, he would say TRUMP lies, he also said if TRUMP isn't IMPEACHED he will win REELECTION

Right there he is already wrong! TRUMP got IMPEACHED & was cruising to REELECTION until this stupid VIRUS PANDEMIC!!!

[poconopundit]

I like the precision of your analytical ruler, Yarkstick :-)

Maybe the New York Times has been so busy manufacturing lies in the last twenty years -- against Reagan and the Bushes - they never notices they were doing anything outrageoius. The hatred for a free republic is inbred.

The difference is that Trump is very clear about wanting to destroy the corrupt press and permanent State.

Winston Churchill made a comment that maybe parallels the fears at the Fake News today:

"In wartime, the Truth is so precious, she must be protected with a Bodyguard of Lies."

[poconopundit]

Maybe someday Mr. Lichtman or the an Editor of the New York Times will find your photo and feel the scorn of the millions of patriots who gave their last full measure to devotionn protect and defend this country... and all the good it signifies.

Then perhaps they will confess their sins before their Maker.

[poconopundit]

I love your philosphical side, tinyowl. It's a great read.

Models exist. To a guy like Trump who knows the "human interface to the world" (Scott Adams), what to do in a particular situation is as true and correct as a martial artist's muscle memory in combat.

Emerson has a passage that speaks to the irrational side of human nature:

Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons.  The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons.

They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.  With such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go.  Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with.

Property will be protected.  Corn will not grow, unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the chances are a hundred to one, that he will cut and harvest it.

Under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway.  They exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction.

Politics from Essays: Second Series (1844)

So Trump's reign is that flood tide where the forces of Chaos are swept aside to enable farmers, honest bankers, and the solid oak natural forces of civil society to regain some control -- albeit temporary control -- over the free republic.

[tinyowl]

Ya - The thing from which we come, be it a thing or entity or God or whatever ... well FIRST of all it probably doesn't give a hoot about 'causation' ... that's an artifact of the human mind ... but even if He or It DID care ... it's certainly not bound by truth in a cognitive/thinking/logic sense. As humans, the present is the only truth, but in one gazillionth of a second we have woven whatever the present was into a story and we have no idea we even did it. Time, causation, truth ... these are properties of the mind, not of the universe.

Except that as humans, we are in fact made of the universe, so in that sense, 'truth is what truth is'. But what exactly that is in relation to anything else, truthfully, can not be said truthfully.

In the end you realize thoughts are just maps to get us to the corner farm store to buy milk, or in the older days, kill a mastodon, for survival. The absolute can not be found in thought. But you CAN build a better widget making machine with thought. It's just not really real.

I know the old Zen masters understood this. They realized there is no need for it to be really real. What gets you to the store to buy milk doesn't have to be the truth. In fact you don't want it to be the capital T Truth -> because THEN the best you can ever have is some thought from a human mind.

Better to connect to something else. THAT can only be done outside of time, causation, conditioning, right, wrong, truth, false. Because in the end, there is no such thing as actually true or actually false.

THAT is the land of God, or Enlightenment. To go THERE, you have to put down all opinions, all knowledge, anything you 'know' or understand, you have to put down everything. When there is nothing that you know, there is something there, though to call it 'something' is a lie, but there aren't words.

I know the old Zen masters understood it. They codified it (orally and in some ways in writing - although it can't actually be codified or 'understood') -> I believe the early Christians understood it, sought to communicate it, knew there weren't words, but gave it their best shot.

It's surprising to me that a literal interpreter of the Bible can in one sentence say God is greater than we can understand, and still think He can be expressed in words. At BEST many of the lies of the mind can be removed, clearing the path. I think the early Christian written history was the least worst thing they could come up with to approach it. Zen masters knew it couldn't be approached intentionally.

So 'Eternal' means 'no time' -> not endless time. This is why 'Heaven is already in and around you' -> you (royal you) just don't know it. It's not the grasping of something, it's actually the opposite.

So I think the key is that WITHIN the scope of the subject of thinking and logic, things can be true, but that scope itself is not cradled in a thing like itself.

In the end the closest thing you can say is 'A is A' and even then you've lied, but it's less of a lie than anything else you can say. Almost. In the oral history, before a student becomes a master, a Zen student answers a certain koan ... not correctly, because there is no correct, but in a way that demonstrates to the master that 'he gets it'. "Getting It" is not true or false, right or wrong. It's just 'getting it'.

What you 'get' is not some thing, in fact you get no thing. There, all words turn into circles, but they remain amusing :-)

In the meantime, we still have to get to the corner store to buy milk, we just don't have to believe it's true. Believing it is true is the BIGGEST wall between man and God. But for communication purposes we can say 'it is true that if you take the 2nd left instead of the 3rd and continue driving, that is the 'wrong way' to get to the corner store. Or if someone says 'the 2nd left is the wrong way' you can say, for communication sake 'that is the truth.' But always it's understood to not be the capital T Truth.

To SOME extent the left (the arrogant high IQ ones) make the mistake of wandering only partially into this territory - one foot in 'something' and one foot in 'no thing and the is-ness that's still there.' If you do that, you will die very soon, hence they can, with a straight face, actually buy into their own moonbattery and talk about it so convincingly because they believe it as to get the lemmings that follow them to run at the cliff with them.

They should thank us, they know not that we save them from certain destruction!

[tinyowl]

"human interface to the world"

Yeah agreed ... and ...

"States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go."

Just this morning I had the related but not related directly discussion with neighbors across the street (not entirely irrational democrats, but of course one was stricken with TDS as we talked, even though I never went in for any kill) ... they opened with 'in our democracy ... this and that is not working.' When will democrats just accept that we are not a democracy and it's for a VERY important point ... so that we run into the Constitution long before we have to learn by running into Nature's wall ... which is more like a wall of propellers or blender blades.

Oh democrats, those furry little darlings :-)

But I take your point, the madness can be to some extent characterized, and Trump has it well characterized and hence can interface with it. I think you've spoken to this before ... that's it's likely simply from years of two things: That he interacted closely with the workin' people on his job sites (as well as elites), but he identified more and hence cared more about the workin' people, thinks of himself as one who just made a ton of money at it, and the second thing is that since he like them and identified with them, he came to know what they were like. In that sense his ability to interface with them is more a function of the simple good human being he is than genius. I'm not saying he's the classically good human being ... but he IS what Ayn Rand was talking about in Fountainhead when Rourke was chillin' on some hillside looking out over one of his developments and he had a really short interaction with the kid that would have changed the kid's life for the better. He's got a good IQ but he had to care about those people to come to know them so well. It's a tougher version of caring than the cuddly dems can understand so they just think he's a dick, which he is, but that's not all he is. (Dick in the sense of Team America.)

Well happy fall to ya.

[GOPJ]

So Trump's reign is that flood tide where the forces of Chaos are swept aside to enable farmers, honest bankers, and the solid oak natural forces of civil society to regain some control ...

Interesting...