Voting Station

Allan Lichtman

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Author

The Resume

    (April 4, 1947- )
    Born in Brooklyn, New York
    Chaired the history department at American University
    Wrote ‘The Keys to the White House’ (1996), ‘White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement’ (2008), and ‘The Case for Impeachment’ (2017)
    Claims to have identified thirteen ‘keys,’ factors that determine if the popular vote for President will be won by the candidate of the party of the incumbent President (whether or not the incumbent is the candidate)

Why he might be annoying:

    He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Senator from Maryland, receiving 1.2% of the vote (2006).
    He and his wife were arrested for unlawful entry after trying to crash the televised debate between the two top-polling candidates.
    He adapted his thirteen keys from a system used by a Russian seismologist to predict earthquakes. (Then again, some of the recent elections have been pretty disastrous, so the technique is more appropriate than it first seems.)
    His keys predict the popular vote winner, but as Al Gore and Hilary Rodham Clinton can attest, that won’t necessarily make you the President.
    He predicted Donald Trump would win the popular vote; although wrong, he is still frequently credited in the media with having predicted Trump’s victory.
    Nate Silver noted some of the keys are subjective, most notably the charisma of the candidates: ‘it’s awfully easy to describe someone as charismatic when he or she is ahead in the polls — or when you have the advantage of hindsight and know who won an election.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    He graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis University and was also on the track and wrestling teams.
    He and his wife were acquitted of the unlawful entry charges.
    While a visiting professor at CalTech, he appeared on Tic Tac Dough, winning $100,000 in a 17-episode run.
    He testified as an expert witness on civil rights in over 70 cases for the Department of Justice.
    He developed the thirteen keys in the early 1980s and they correctly predicted the popular vote winner in every Presidential election from 1984 to 2012.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 90.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 18 Votes: 94.44% Annoying