Part one: what is this book and should you read it?

Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House (henceforth rendered “The Keys”) is an ambitious book. Penned by historian Allan Lichtman, The Keys explains his system for forecasting the outcome of US presidential elections. This system is also called “The Keys”. So, to help readers figure out whether I’m talking about the book or the system, I’m only going to italicize The Keys when I’m explicitly referring to the book. The Keys is a 13-strong checklist of “true-or-false” statements that measure how well the incumbent party has performed during its term in office. If six or more statements are judged to be “false” then the election goes to the challenger. Five or fewer, and the incumbent takes it.

According to Lichtman, The Keys reflect a number of axiomatic truths about the democratic system in the US. And although he’s keen to caution against superposing these truths non-reflectively on democratic systems in other countries, he also believes The Keys speak to political processes in liberal democracies more generally.

In his introductory chapter, Lichtman describes a “pragmatic” American electorate that chooses a president “according to the performance of the party holding the White House” and theorises: “If candidates and the media could come to understand that governing, not campaigning, counts in presidential elections, we could have a new kind of presidential politics.” (Lichtman, 2016, pp. 8). This new kind of politics would dump the attack ads and go deep on policy promises, outlining substantial agendas of what candidates actually planned to do with their desired four years in office.

I should be clear from the outset that I think Lichtman’s vision is an appealing one. I also think The Keys is well written, and The Keys is well conceived. Assuming you’re in the target audience, you will probably enjoy reading this book, and might come away from it with something useful. What is the target audience? Probably people who enjoy reading long copy about predictive methodology and political history (given where you’re reading this, I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that includes you, dear reader).

With all that out of the way, let me tell you what’s coming next. In part two, I’ll give a brief overview of what’s in this book and how I’m going to address it. In the third section, I’m...

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