Brand New update on Allan Lichtman's 13 keys to the White House

[bigdarryl]

The guy has NEVER been wrong on the popular vote in a Presidential election he even predicted Gore would win the popular. http://www.gazette.net/stories/05272011/policol193154_32542.php

[nuxvomica]

1. This is a must-read for presidential election watchers

I've been doing my own tracking of events based on Lichtman's theory and we seem to agree on everything but the charisma key, which I think will turn in the president's favor as the campaign ramps up. I think the insiders (including the Republican candidate dropouts) take Lichtman's theory very seriously and I figured the Republicans have been deliberately trying to throttle the economy to turn the short-term key against Pres. Obama.

[BeyondGeography]

2. "Only a historically unprecedented reversal of fortune could alter the verdict of the keys."

That's nice, since the keys point to re-election. One caveat: this economy, which has been (barely) propped up by stimulus money and QE2, feels capable of historical reversals of fortune.

[bigdarryl]

3. Obama could still win even if the ecomomy is in recession according to the keys

and I agree I think he will get the charisma key in his favor as the campaign heats up

[starroute]

4. Then you've got to bet the GOP is doing the math right now

From their point of view, unless Obama wins by a landslide, there's going to be some mathematical path to a Republican victory. And you've got to believe that they (and specifically Karl Rove) are charting this out right now and setting their plans for how to get there.

This would involve:

1) Levering their advantage in many of the more sparsely populated states to get within shooting distance of an electoral college win even with a popular vote loss.

2) Pinpointing the issues which would make it easiest for them to get the states they have to have and trying to make the campaign about those rather than about issues like Medicare which might lose them some of the states they count on.

3) Figuring out the combination of dirty tricks and voter disenfranchisement to bring in just enough of the larger swing states for them to put it over the top.

Ohio and Florida are clearly going to be among their prime targets yet again. Virginia and North Carolina are also likely to be battlegrounds, as two southern states that Obama won in 2008. But they'd still need maybe two more middle-sized states, which they could get from either the rust belt or the mountain states.

The bottom line, as I see it, is that Lichtman's keys work only if an election is relatively honest. This means that we have to be hyper-alert for both attempts at the Fox News level to gin up phony issues and electoral chicanery like these biased and possibly unconstitutional voter ID bills.

Oh -- there's also the even trickier problem of convincing Democrats to actually run on the issues which favor them instead of bending over backwards to appease voters on the GOP's chosen playing field. That may be the hardest part of all.