The Keys to the White House

According to the conventional wisdom, America’s continuing economic woes should make it difficult for Barack Obama to win election to a second term. Some of the academic models that turn on economic statistics sustain this grim forecast for the president. Based on the economy alone, it would be foolhardy to predict an Obama victory in November. However, the Keys model does not presume that voters are driven by economic concerns alone. Voters are less narrowminded and more sophisticated than that; they decide presidential elections on a wide-ranging assessment of the performance of the party holding the White House, all of which are reflected in one or more keys. For example, analysts presume that foreign policy does not matter this year, because it is so little discussed in the campaign. Yet for decades Republicans have blasted Democrats for allegedly being “soft” on matters of national security and world affairs. The relative absence of such attacks this year reflects Obama’s successful record in these areas of policy, which secures him the two foreign policy keys included in the Keys model. What is unsaid in the campaign may be as important as what is said. I first developed the Keys to the White House in 1981, in collaboration with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok. Retrospectively, we found that the Keys correctly accounted for the results of American presidential elections from 1860 to 1980, ranging from the horse and buggy days of American politics to the era of jet planes, polls, and television. The relationship between governing and politics uncovered by the Keys thus held true across nearly 120 years of American history and vast changes in our economy, society, and politics: suffrage for women and minorities; new immigrants from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America; the rise of the corporation; and the advent of new technologies. The track record of advance prediction by the Keys since 1981 should provide confidence in its forecast for 2012. The Keys system has correctly forecast the results of all seven presidential elections Social Education 76(5), pp 233–235 ©2012 National Council for the Social Studies