Obama 'Guaranteed' 2012 Win, American University Professor Says

AOL Politics Daily ^ | July 12, 2010 | David Sessions

[rightwingintelligentsia]

President Obama is "guaranteed" to win re-election in 2012, according to Allan Lichtman, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. Lichtman's formula predicts the outcome of the popular vote without considering candidate opinion polls, campaign strategies or political events.

Lichtman's system is based on 13 political conditions that he calls "keys." The keys favor the incumbent president's party: When five or fewer of them are false, the incumbent party wins the presidency. If six or more are false, the opposition party wins. In 2007, Lichmann predicted that any Democratic candidate -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or Barack Obama -- would have beaten John McCain.

Only four of the 13 keys (outlined here) are currently in the "false" column for President Obama. Counting against him are the facts that he has not achieved a major foreign policy victory, that his party will lose seats in the House of Representatives, and that per-capita economic growth does not exceed the two previous presidential terms. "True" keys include: there is no serious contest for the Democratic Party nomination, Obama has not presided over a major foreign policy failure, and his administration has achieved "major changes in national policy."

Lichtman, who described the keys theory in his 2008 book, "Keys to the White House: A Surefire Guide to Predicting the Next President," questions the widespread perception that presidential campaigns are "horse races" influenced by minor events and media coverage.

[cranked]

I hope Academic idiots like Sessions continue to spout and tout this garbage.....only pisses of the majority of Americans even more....makes us more determined to prove these type people spouting such wrong...=.=

[backwoods-engineer]

Obama is not guaranteed anything, including surviving his first term, especially if a shooting Civil War breaks out.

[Bob J]

"Rather, a pragmatic American electorate chooses a president according to the performance of the party holding the White House as measured by how the media portrays the consequential events and episodes of a term -- economic boom and bust, foreign policy successes and failures, social unrest, scandal, and policy innovation."

Fixed it for Mr. Lichmann

[ChuxsterS]

Although this article implies that professor Allan Lichtman actually offered an opinion about Obama's chances in 2012, I think the reporter/blogger simply simply took Lichtman's keys and predicted the result he wanted and attributed it to Lichtman.

Licthman's keys actually are pretty insightful and do have some validity, but neither the professor nor any sane person would try to evaluate the keys prior to the actual election year and we're two friggin years away from election 2012.

The other problem with Lichtman's keys is they're a bit subjective. How much scandal constitutes "major" scandal? What amount of "charisma" makes the incumbent or a challenger "charismatic", etc.

[Perdogg]

You are correct. However, one could argue that both Bush and Hoover were mere extensions of Reagan and Coolidge's terms.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

OK. I can see that.

[TexasRepublic]

All that matters is who counts the votes. Joe Stalin said so.

[Vermont Lt]

With the slightest bit of an opening, what Hillary dash for a challenge. She is going to be going on the ticket—either as the head or as Obama’s VP. Biden is done after this term.

They need to do something to spice things up.

[Vermont Lt]

Watching his foreign policy is like watching a tower lose its guy wires one at a time. It is swinging wildly from side to side, swaying ever closer to total collapse. If you watch it you know it cannot hold on.

No failure yet. But when it goes down, it will go down hard.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

He has 13 conditions and at most, 20 data points (elections). Actually, you have fewer elections because he his talking about reelecting an incumbent.You have to reduce them even further because a bunch of the incumbent reelections were FDR, which strike me as a possible outlier.

Even if you count FDR's extra reelections, I'd say you couldn't have more than 10 or 11 reelection bids in the past century.

You could fit almost any set of 20 data points with 13 variables.

True.

But what really leaps out at you is the fact that there are 2 years to go to 2012, and any number of those variables could flip in a lot less time than that. And it's hard to think that serious economic dislocations aren't baked into the cake of all that Pelosi/Reid legislation already on the books and ready to debut in 2011.

[Kenny Bunk]

(4) False: Tea Party

(5) False: If this ain't a Re-De- Pre-Cession-Pression, what the heck is it?

(6) False:

(8) False: Tea Party

(9) False: Blago Trial, Soros, Jones, Oil Screw Up

(10) False: Foreign Policy a disaster

(4) False: Tea Party

(1) False: given

(2) False: Maybe. Hillary ain't dead.

9 negatives by my count. But so what? The GOP has an excellent history of throwing up a free lunch.