Can Obama Win?

The cable and network analysts of our Presidential horse race are a waste of time, unless you find them entertaining, and I do. If you want to predict who will win the popular vote in the next election consider the following.

1. The campaigns by the Democratic and the Republican candidates will cancel one another out. Also the campaigns will be followed only by voters who are already committed. Republican and Democratic voters cancel each other out. Everyone else will find the campaigns an annoyance and pay them little attention.

2. The election will be, like all Presidential elections, a referendum by the voters on the party in power in the White House. Should that party remain in power in the White House because it's doing okay or not?

3. The criteria used by our pragmatic, uninformed, independent voters in judging the White House will be varied and subjective. The election will not be decided by one or two factors like the economy or foreign policy or who is likable.
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Most of the above comes from THE KEYS TO THE PRESIDENCY by Allan Lightman and Ken DeCell, who have worked out a list of 13 factors that enable them to predict the popular vote in Presidential contests. Their system has worked for the last 33 Presidential elections. No other predicting system comes close to that record.

Note that the 13 keys predict the popular vote and not the outcome, which has been stolen several times by Republicans (Hayes/Tilden and Bush/Gore come to mind).

This method does not use polls, because polls are, as many have learned, unverifiable and unreliable.
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The Thirteen Keys

There is no way to weight these keys and apparently no need to do so. The operating rule is that if five or fewer of the following keys are false, the incumbent party wins the popular vote. To date this method has been accurate in every case.

True or false is determined by general voter perception, not by right or left ideology.
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1. The White House incumbent party gained seats in the last House election. (False)

2. There is no serious contest for the incumbent party's nomination. (True)

3. The incumbent party candidate is the sitting President. (True)

4. There is no significant third-party candidate. (T/F)

5. The economy is not in recession. (T/F)

6. Real per-capita economic growth is positive. (T/F)

7. The incumbent has made major changes in national policy. (T/F)

8. There is no sustained social unrest. (T/F)

9. There is no major incumbent party scandal. (T/F)

10. There has been no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (T/F)

11. The administration has achieved a major success in foreign or military affairs. (T/F)

12. The incumbent candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (T/F)

13. The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (T/F)