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Dubner examines the science of presidential prediction: from Allan Lichtman's 13 Keys model to prediction markets to polling aggregation. He asks: can elections be predicted, or is the question itself misleading?
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Canon
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Dubner demonstrates that election-season discourse is dominated by narratives ('the debate changed everything,' 'the October surprise will be decisive') that have almost no predictive power, while structural factors (economic indicators, incumbency) that actually predict elections receive almost no coverage.
Highlights
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The best election forecasters succeed by ignoring campaigns and focusing on structural factors
Dubner profiles Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted 9 of the last 10 elections using structural factors (economy, incumbency, social unrest) — not polls, campaign performance, or debate outcomes. His model treats campaigns as noise and structure as signal.Was this useful?