“Debate performances can be overcome,” Allan Lichtman said. “At the first sign of adversity the spineless Democrats want to throw under the bus, their own incumbent president.”
His hypothesis is that elections are mostly not about individuals. People vote for Team Blue or Team Red. And given the embrace by evangelicals of a criminal who has never read the bible, I think he may have a point.
The only individual characteristic that matters is incumbency, which is why Democrats shouldn’t throw that advantage away.
The only individual characteristic that matters is incumbency.
Most other factors mostly do not depend on the individual who is running. For example, recession, military victories/losses, results of midterm elections, significant third party challenger, etc. The party can run anyone and it would not affect those points.
However, I overlooked another individual characteristic: there is an extra point if the incumbent is a victorious military leader or has significant appeal to members of the opposing party. The only person to get that point in this century was Obama, and only in 2008.
His hypothesis is that elections are mostly not about individuals. People vote for Team Blue or Team Red. And given the embrace by evangelicals of a criminal who has never read the bible, I think he may have a point.
The only individual characteristic that matters is incumbency, which is why Democrats shouldn’t throw that advantage away.
The incumbent lost in 2020. There may be other factors.
The only individual characteristic that matters is incumbency.
Most other factors mostly do not depend on the individual who is running. For example, recession, military victories/losses, results of midterm elections, significant third party challenger, etc. The party can run anyone and it would not affect those points.
However, I overlooked another individual characteristic: there is an extra point if the incumbent is a victorious military leader or has significant appeal to members of the opposing party. The only person to get that point in this century was Obama, and only in 2008.
The only one to win the Democratic primaries, at least.
This system is only meant to predict the general election. It ignores any primary candidates who were not nominated.
Seems to me that the model has some blind spots.
It does what it means to do.
Until it doesn’t.
Democrats used to trust polls, too. Now they only trust them if they confirm existing biases.