Lichtman’s not stupid, but debates can matter
Harris-Trump debate could be decisive like 1980. Debate sent Reagan to landslide win.
Source: Reagan Library Composite Audiovisual Material
Hot takes (some even evidence-based)
1980 Reagan-Carter is the prime example of a debate deciding the election.
Thanks to his debating skill, Reagan changed the ballot question to: “Has Carter been a good economic steward?” from “Is Reagan too extreme?”
To win tonight, Trump must avoid crazy talk and copy Reagan’s rhetorical question to voters: “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”
Harris can also learn from Reagan. If she projects Reagan’s air of relaxed confidence, she can neutralize Trump’s portrayal of her as an extremist.
Captain Obvious take
Harris’ polling lead is not bigly enough to ensure an Electoral College win.
Professor Allan Lichtman predicts Harris will win
American University Professor Allan Lichtman has earned his reputation as the Nostradamus of presidential politics. Lichtman called all 10 elections from 1984 to 2020 with his 13 keys to the White House model. (There is some debate about whether he was right in 2000. Lichtman argues that he correctly called Al Gore winning the national popular vote.)
On September 5th, Professor Lichtman announced his prediction that Vice President Kamala Harris will win the presidency on November 5th.
Lichtman’s prediction is bold. The latest polls show Trump winning the Electoral College even with Harris narrowly leading the national popular vote.
Lichtmann: “Debates count for very little”
Professor Lichtman’s call was doubly audacious because he did not wait for the Harris-Trump debate smackdown scheduled for tonight September 10th.
However, Lichtman’s decision to call the election for Harris before the candidates had debated was consistent with his long-standing contention that:
“Debates, advertising, television appearances, news coverage and campaign strategies … count for very little on Election Day.”
Biden proved Lichtman wrong: A debate can matter
After Trump trounced President Biden in the June 27th debate, Lichtman said:
“Debates are not predictive of (election) outcomes… Democrats’ only real chance to win, contrary to everything you've heard, is with Biden running."
Professor Lichtman heaped scorn on:
“pundits and pollsters and analysts that … have no track record in predicting elections… [but] claim they know how this debate is going to affect the outcome of elections, they have no idea. It's sports talk radio… it has no scientific basis.”
In that same CNN interview on June 30th, Professor Lichtman predicted that the impact of the Biden-Trump debate would be: “Zero.”
Three weeks later, President Biden ignored Professor Lichtman’s advice and announced his decision to withdraw from the presidential contest at the behest of Democratic Party leaders concerned that Biden’s fading support after his disastrous debate would drag congressional Democrats down to defeat.
What was Lichtman thinking? Probably about 1960, 1976
Professor Lichtman has not fully articulated why he thinks that debates don’t determine who wins the presidency. He likely has in mind academic work concluding that it is a myth that:
John Kennedy won the 1960 election because he bested Nixon in debate.
President Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election because of his debate gaffe denying “Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”.
Public opinion polls showed little or no effect of debates on the 1960 and 1976 elections. Kennedy and Nixon were locked in a tight race in 1960 before the debates and that’s exactly how the election ended up. Kennedy won the national popular vote by less than 0.2 percentage points.
The 1976 election differed in many respects from 1960 except for lack of evidence that debates affected the outcome. Democratic Party challenger Jimmy Carter had a large double-digit lead at summer’s end. The race tightened during the fall campaign. Republican President Ford continued catching up all the way to election day when he lost by 2 percentage points. The trend was not affected by the Carter-Ford debates.
1980: Reagan landslide due to his decisive debate win
1980 is the one election when the debate between the candidates told the tale.
By October, Republican Party challenger Ronald Reagan had built a narrow lead of 1.4 percentage points in the average of public polls. However, the race was still up for grabs. Democratic President Carter led in half of those polls.
Carter and Reagan had disagreed about whether third-party candidate John Anderson should participate in debates. That summer Anderson had polled as high as 25% – in 2nd place ahead of President Carter in 3rd.
Carter refused to appear with Anderson for fear that the moderate former Republican was more of a threat to him than Reagan, who insisted on including Anderson for the same reason. A Reagan-Anderson debate took place on Sept. 21st. Carter boycotted.
Unsure of victory, Reagan dropped his demand that Anderson be included in another debate. Reagan and Carter debated on October 28th – one week before election day. Reagan crushed President Carter with his memorable rhetorical question to voters:
“ask yourself, are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was 4 years ago?”
Professor D. Jason Berggren recounted the Carter camp’s post-debate perspective.
Carter reported in his diary for October 30 that his pollster Pat Caddell found that the post-debate figures were not looking good. Things were moving in the wrong direction. “Reagan apparently improved more than I did. Nobody knows.” The President and the country would soon know – and know in a decisive, unambiguous way come November 4, 1980.
Reagan rode his debate triumph to win by 10 percentage points on election day.
1980 election was about the economy, stupid
As James Carville would say. Or feelings about the economy, as I would say.
By winning the debate, Reagan normalized the 1980 election. Reagan turned the election back into a judgment of the incumbent President’s management of the economy, rather than a referendum about the challenger being too extreme.
In the end, Reagan’s 1980 election victory was in line with my EconomyStupid Model backcast based on the Index of Consumer Sentiment, just like Carter’s 1976 election.
Parallels between the 1980 and 2024 election campaigns
On the eve of the debate, the race is tight. Neither side is sure of winning.
Americans are feeling sour about the economy. In October 1980, the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) was 75 – well below the long-term average of 86. ICS in 2024 is 76. (I have adjusted ICS to be comparable with past data.)
Inflation is making Americans down on the economy. 9.1% inflation in June 2022 was the highest in 4 decades. The annual rate is down to 2.9% today and could fall to 2.6% in the update tomorrow Sept. 11th. But, the public opinion damage is done. Voters blame President Biden and Vice President Harris for high prices. In 1980, inflation hit a post-WW2 peak of 14.8% in March. The decline to 12.6% by the time of the October debate provided cold comfort to President Carter.
In both 1980 and 2024, doubts about the candidate’s fitness for office prevented the Republicans from taking full advantage of economic discontent. In 1980, independent voters worried that Reagan was a right-wing extremist like his mentor Senator Goldwater, who had gone down to defeat in 1964 as a self-proclaimed extremist. In 2024, swing voters know former President Trump to be an extremist by temperament.
In 2024, Democrats have been unable to take full advantage of voter doubts about Trump partly because he has portrayed "Comrade" Harris successfully as a left-wing extremist. Democrats branded Reagan as a right-wing extremist in 1980 with some success – until the debate.
Lessons from 1980 for the 2024 Harris-Trump debate
In the 1980 debate, Reagan’s affable demeanor belied Democrat attempts to tar him as a wild-eyed radical. By projecting a confident and relaxed air, Reagan was free to prosecute the economic case against President Carter. By contrast, Carter came across as a cranky man who was not enjoying his high office.
No doubt, strategists on both sides in 2024 have studied the Carter-Reagan debate.
Dollars to donuts say that Donald Trump will ask viewers something like Reagan’s famous question: “are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”
Trump’s goal should be to normalize the 2024 election, as Reagan did in 1980. Fortunately for Vice President Harris, the words Trump and normal have rarely appeared together in the same sentence.
Trump will win IF he discovers the discipline to stick to issues, particularly pocketbook economics, rather than crazy talk. With Americans so down about the economy, Trump’s madness is the sole reason that this election is even close. Any other Republican would defeat Harris by a mile.
On the other side, Harris needs to channel Reagan’s air of relaxed confidence. If Harris can bring out angry Trump as Reagan exposed cranky Carter, she wins.
Caveat
One clear difference between now and then is that the Reagan-Carter debate took place one week before election day. The Carter campaign had no time to recover.
If Trump wins the debate tonight, but the campaign resets over the next 8 weeks and Harris goes on to win, I will write an apology to Lightman entitled: “Sayeed was stupid”.
Part of Professor Lichtman's argument after the June 27 debate is that Biden as incumbent president held a powerful key that Harris either would not have or would not have so strongly. I agree with Lichtman (and disagree with Nate Silver) that incumbency remains powerful -- in ordinary circumstances. But, the June 27 debate introduced a new negative key -- 81-year-old president who shows that he cannot put thoughts together -- that outweighed incumbency (3.6-3.7 percentage points is my rough estimate of incumbency factor which showed up even for unpopular incumbents like Carter and Bush the elder).
Btw, quite a twitter quarrel went on between Lichtman and Silver. Lichtman called Silver a "clerk" meaning he just enters polls into a spreadsheet. Silver challenged Lichtman to a bet.
Annual Inflation down to 2.5% in today's release. Cleveland Fed nowcasting further fall in last pre-election update October 10th. Not sure how that would fit into Lichtman's keys, but at the very least it can't hurt Harris.
Isn't Professor Lichtman in danger of contradicting himself? He said in June that the Democrats can only win if they keep Biden, based on adding up the score of his 13 Keys, and now predicts that Harris will win, again based on adding up his 13 Keys. Couldn't he have made that latter calculation back in June? About the only Key that one could argue has changed between then and now is the 'Third Party': "There is no significant third party or independent campaign." But switching that one key would not change Lichtman's prediction.