
Professor Who Called Trump’s Win Predicts Trump Will Be Impeached - andrewl
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/11/prediction-professor-who-called-trumps-big-win-also-made-another-forecast-trump-will-be-impeached/
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jbuzbee
Let me get this straight. He claims his system has correctly called every
presidential election since 1984. But he predicted a win for Gore in 2000. He
says that was correct since Gore won the popular vote. In 2016, he called the
election for Trump. And that too is correct even though Clinton won the
popular vote. Okay... Sounds like someone is "moving the goalposts" to suit
their model...

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pwg
9 fully random coin flips in a row have a 1 in 512 chance of also being right
for all nine elections from 1984 through 2016.

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kristianc
I'm not sure about impeachment - but I do think that's the most likely outcome
is Trump derailing his own Presidency with injudicious remarks. Bill Clinton
lost two years of his legislative programme due to the furore created by a
comment he made about gays in the military while out jogging at dawn.

I'd say that it's more or less inevitable that Trump is going to say something
on Twitter that is going to blow up in his face in a big way. People are able
to say all sorts of things when they're running for the Candidacy / Presidency
(H Clinton the first time round had several such mishaps). Do that when you're
President and there's a good chance you'll run out of political capital before
you've managed to achieve anything meaningful.

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bdrool
Or he'll do the opposite, as in he'll shoot his mouth off so often people will
give up trying to hold him accountable, making him an unpredictable wild card
that can pretty much do anything he wants. (In fact I'd say he crossed that
point a long time ago.)

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kristianc
It's also fair to say the media has gone into full-blown self flagellation
these past few days about the job they did holding Trump to account. Whether
it will go back to business as usual in two weeks remains to be seen.

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dahdum
"This one is not based on a system; it's just my gut."

Just a reporter scraping for a story.

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helthanatos
I actually think Trump may do his best as president. He may do some really
dumb things (really what president hasn't?). Unless he decides to do some
really really illegal stuff, he probably won't be impeached. Let's just all
hope Trump doesn't hurt us. I doubt Trump's presidency will turn out as bad as
many people are predicting.

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DefaultUserHN
He's egotistic and wants to be the best. Which is great, it means he'll try to
be the best President that he can be.

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mcguire
The article reports this regarding the source of the predictions:

" _It 's worth noting that Lichtman's predictions use very different methods
than pollsters and data-based prognosticators. Some statisticians take issue
with the structure of his system, a set of 13 true/false questions, saying
that the binary nature of his keys leads to what's called “overfitting,” which
is basically creating a system that fits the data but has little statistical
significance. But Lichtman counters by saying that the system has correctly
predicted every election since 1984 (specifically, his predictions have picked
the next president correctly in all of those elections but 2000, when he
picked Al Gore, who won the popular vote). And Lichtman has his own criticism
of data-based predictions._

" _“Polls are not predictors,” he said Friday in an email. “They are snapshots
that simulate an election. They are abused and misused as predictors. Even the
analysis of polls by Nate Silver and others which claimed a probable Clinton
victory with from more than 70 percent to 99 percent certainty are mere
compilations that are no better than the underlying polls.”_

" _And he has particular disdain for prediction systems that assign a
likelihood of winning._

" _“For all his acclaim, Nate Silver is only a clerk, not a scientific
analyst,” Lichtman said._ "

There is no source for the impeachment prediction; that may be pure, but
possibly well grounded, cynicism.

The "keys" on which the prediction is based can be found in:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/05/12/th...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/05/12/this-professor-has-predicted-every-presidential-election-
since-1984-hes-still-trying-to-figure-out-2016/)

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Xcelerate
When enough people are making predictions, a few are bound to be right through
chance alone. The same phenomenon occurs with the stock market. The question
is, how do you distinguish correct predictions made by chance from those made
by correct analytical methods? This task may be as difficult as the original
prediction itself.

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Hydraulix989
Great, he's using his newfound fame and credibility in one area (a lucky coin
toss), to make grand assertions on what Trump's presidency will be like. Where
can I buy the crystal ball he is using?

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jaffa214525
I had a similar thought. The GOP establishment is clearly not happy with
Trump. If given a serious enough opportunity, the GOP may be willing to
impeach their own President, to replace him with Mike Pence.

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TheSpiceIsLife
Word on the street is that's actually been the plan all along.

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sfifs
That would be a tremendously bad idea. Suppressing popular votes for hope (in
this case by poorer people without college degrees) is what causes revolution.

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carsongross
The GOP electorate went 90% for Trump.

This would be asking for a coup.

But then I suppose we are at that point in the arc of Empire now.

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bobbytherobot
I don't think he has much data to work off to create a model for impeachment.

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Hydraulix989
Right, he's clearly just abusing his limelight to make a statement here.

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pitay
Mark Blyth is a professor who predicted Brexit and Trump's victory. If you
want a global perspective on these things, Mark Blyth is a very interesting
person to listen to.

