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Speaker 1: To the United States we Go. Karmena Harris is set

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Speaker 1: to announce her vice presidential pick tomorrow, ahead of their

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Speaker 1: first public appearance together in Pennsylvania on Thursday. Presidential historian

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Speaker 1: Alan Lickman has correctly predicted almost every US election since

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties through a process called the Thirteen Keys

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Speaker 1: to the White House. He's with us this morning, Allen,

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Speaker 1: thanks for being on the show. Who's going to Win?

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Speaker 2: Well? I have not made a final prediction yet. I've

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Speaker 2: been misinterpreted as having made one, but I'm not going

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Speaker 2: to make one until after the Democratic Convention. But I

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Speaker 2: have been saying for months, and the switch from Biden

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Speaker 2: to Harris has not changed that that a lot would

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Speaker 2: have to go wrong for the Democrats to lose. That's

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Speaker 2: certainly possible, that can happen. Things are very fluid, But

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Speaker 2: a lot would have to go wrong for the Democrats

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Speaker 2: to lose. According to my Keys to the white House system,

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Speaker 2: which taps into the structure of how American presidential elections

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Speaker 2: really work as votes up or down on the strength

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Speaker 2: and performance of the White House Party, and the system

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Speaker 2: has been right since I predicted Ronald Reagan's reelection in

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Speaker 2: April nineteen eighty two, nearly three years ahead of time,

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Speaker 2: when America was then in the worst recession since the

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Speaker 2: Great Depression, and sixty percent of Americans thought Ronald Reagan

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Speaker 2: was too old to run again. And of course I

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Speaker 2: was virtually alone in predicting Donald Trump's win in twenty sixteen, which,

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Speaker 2: as you can imagine, did not make me very popular

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Speaker 2: in ninety percent plus Democratic Washington, d C. Where I

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Speaker 2: teach at American University.

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Speaker 1: That your formula works, you're stuck to it, You're held

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Speaker 1: to ground. I think that's when I last interviewed you.

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Speaker 1: You've got these thirteen keys. Some of them are about

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Speaker 1: the economy, you know, the short term economy, the long

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Speaker 1: term economy. Obviously there's been inflation in the US. The

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Speaker 1: stock markets are in turmoil at the moment. Do you

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Speaker 1: weight the keys differently or they all weighted the same.

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Speaker 2: There are two secrets to the successful use of the keys,

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Speaker 2: and one is they are weighted as one. The problem

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Speaker 2: is when you wight parameters of any system, they have

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Speaker 2: to be based on past elections, but the weights will

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Speaker 2: then unpredictably change in a future election, creating errors. Secondly,

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Speaker 2: there are trigger effects, so if one key is big enough,

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Speaker 2: it will trigger other keys. For example, in the sixties,

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Speaker 2: the war in Vietnam triggered Lyndon Johnson to withdraw from

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Speaker 2: his re election campaign, losing the incumbency key, losing the

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Speaker 2: party contest key. The war created a great deal of

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Speaker 2: social unrest and democratic losses in the midterm elections of

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Speaker 2: nineteen In sixty six.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned the incumbency key. Does Harris get that even

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Speaker 1: though she wasn't the president in this term?

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was very critical of the democrats

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Speaker 2: shameful public trashing of their incumbent president, and I thought

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Speaker 2: they were heading for the disaster of both losing the

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Speaker 2: incumbency key if they forced Biden out and losing the

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Speaker 2: party contest key, because they were heading for a big brawl.

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Speaker 2: But somehow the Democrats grew a spine in a brain,

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Speaker 2: did the right thing, united behind Harris, which avoided the

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Speaker 2: loss of the contest key. And so this major change

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Speaker 2: only cost the Democrats one key, the incumbency key, and

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Speaker 2: did not fundamentally change my assessment.

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Speaker 1: What about Robert F. Kennedy, one of your keys is

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Speaker 1: a third party being involved. What do you think his

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Speaker 1: chances will be? And who does it hurt.

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Speaker 2: Third parties in my system count against the White House

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Speaker 2: Party because it's a sign of discontent. But it's a

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Speaker 2: high threshold key. You've got to anticipate the third party

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Speaker 2: candidate to be getting at least five percent of the vote.

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Speaker 2: Of course I don't know that, So it's the one

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Speaker 2: time I have to use a poll. But I don't

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Speaker 2: take the poll at face value because typically, as a

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Speaker 2: result of the Lickman wasted vote syndrome, I love you

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Speaker 2: RFK JR. Which can't win, so I won't vote for you.

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Speaker 2: I cut the poll numbers in half. So he's got

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Speaker 2: to be polling at at least ten percent. I don't

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Speaker 2: think that's going to happen.

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Speaker 1: Ell in one of your caves. The final question is

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Speaker 1: incumbent charisma challenge a charisma, who's more charismatic.

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Speaker 2: It's not a question of who's more charismatic. It's a

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Speaker 2: question of whether these candidates fulfill my criteria, which is

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Speaker 2: they have to be one of these once in a

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Speaker 2: generation inspirational, broadly appealing candidates who converts members of the opposition,

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Speaker 2: like the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt or the Republican Ronald Reagan,

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Speaker 2: who won six elections in landslides or near landslides. Clearly,

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Speaker 2: Paris has not yet emerged as an FDR, and Trump

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Speaker 2: is not a Reagan. He lost two elections in the

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Speaker 2: votes of the people by ten million votes. There are

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Speaker 2: not Trump Democrats like there were Reagan Democrats. He only

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Speaker 2: appeals to a narrow base and thus does not fit

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Speaker 2: the criteria either. For more from news Talks at b

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Speaker 2: listen live on air or online, and keep our shows

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Speaker 2: with you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.