Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > July > 29 > Entry
Martin Gottlieb: Fisher has much bigger problem than money
2010 ELECTION
Don’t bad-mouth Lee Fisher’s chances in November because you’ve been reading that he doesn’t have any money.
Bad-mouth them because of the prediction yielded by Allan Lichtman’s system for predicting election outcomes.
Regular readers, if any, may recall that this column highlighted the Lichtman system’s prediction in the 2008 presidential election. The column made the flat call of a Democratic victory before anybody knew who the Democratic candidate would be.
In other words, forget about the debates and Barack Obama’s alleged charisma and racial guilt and all that; forget, indeed, everything that happened during the fall campaign. The victory came because it was a Democratic year.
Old readers may remember similarly prescient input from these quarters well before the presidential elections of 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992 and 1988.
Well, Lichtman also has a similar system for predicting Senate race outcomes. It looks at eight factors — or “keys.” Standing alone, each is a pretty good predictor of outcomes. The idea is that if you combine them, you might approach foolproof, as the presidential system (with 13 keys) has, so far.
The Senate system also used to be noted regularly in this column, but it hasn’t been in very recent years. It’s not as powerful as the presidential system. It does often get more than 90 percent of the races right in a year. That makes it better than any other method I’ve come across, especially when you figure that the predictions come before the campaigns.
But the Senate system runs into problems in certain kinds of years. If there’s a great national tide in favor of one party — the Republicans in 1994, the Democrats in 2006 — the accuracy rate can fall. The keys are mainly about local factors.
With that in mind, we come to 2010 in Ohio.
I’m sorry I didn’t run this column sooner, because the system yielded a prediction well before Fisher’s money problems showed up. (He’s being outraised by about 9-1 at last report.)
Let’s look at each of the keys. Four must turn in the direction of the incumbent party if it is to get the prediction. The Republicans are the incumbents, with Sen. George Voinovich.
Key 1 goes to the Republicans if they are putting up the actual incumbent as a candidate. No. Voinovich is retiring.
Key 2 goes to the Republicans if their candidate is a major national figure. No. “Major” means major. We’re talking Hillary Clinton, John Glenn. Not a former Cabinet officer.
Key 3 is Republican if they avoided a tough primary. Yes.
Key 4 is Republican if the party got more than 60 percent of the votes the last time the seat was contested. Yes. Voinovich shellacked Eric Fingerhut.
Key 5 is Republican if they outspend the other side by 10 percent or more. Yes, almost certainly.
Key 6 is Republican if the Democratic candidate has never been in Congress or governor. Yes.
Key 7 is Republican if the Democrats hold the presidency. (Mid-terms tend to be bad for the president’s party.) Yes.
Key 8 is Republican if the Democrats did not have a serious primary. (A primary among the challengers is, for whatever reasons, typically followed by victory for them.) No. The Democrats had a serious primary.
That’s five keys for Portman; four even without the money key, which is enough.
If Fisher wins, he not only overcomes the keys, which is unusual. He does it in an unusual way. The usual way is to ride a party’s national tide. But one thing nobody is expecting in November is a Democratic tide.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
Comments
By Max
July 29, 2010 9:00 PM | Link to this
Martin….lol….why don’t we just wait for the Vegas line? Your scenario’s are like ESPN’s at week 10 of the BCS race….LOL…But, I am intrigued by your ‘key’ system. I think this is going to be an unusual year, nationally, and peculiar, locally. No Democrat (read that as Strickland and fisher) is getting any bounce from Obama because of the Independents’ move away fro the President. I know, I know,…historically Independents don’t affect Ohio politics. This year may be the exception. That might be a trump card in any one of your ‘keys.’
By Groundhog Day
July 29, 2010 9:25 PM | Link to this
This has to be the 25th time Gottlieb has talked about the Lichtman method. When will Martin actually produce and pen an original thought?
By Groundhog Day
July 29, 2010 9:26 PM | Link to this
This has to be the 25th time Gottlieb has talked about the Lichtman method. When will Martin actually produce and pen an original thought?
By Sick of Lichtman
July 29, 2010 11:14 PM | Link to this
Give it up Martin. Your interpretation of Lichtman is BORING. If you have to inflict this guy on us every election, at least make him write his own articles. I think you’re the only person in the world who finds him interesting.
By Max
July 30, 2010 6:30 AM | Link to this
I was told by my femminist adversaries tears ago that males are hardwired to make analytical predictions; ‘part of the hunting strategy thing I guess. This may account for why men have more problems with gambling than women. ‘Just a thought…..”You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.” - Yogi Berra.
By Davidss2
July 30, 2010 9:29 AM | Link to this
Martin wants to show us he’s an intellectual, one of the “educated class” of obamaphiles who know how to run the country. Most of us don’t sit and read. Instead we use our own thinking to figure out that Democrats have swarmed in and run things excluding and ridiculing anything the Republicans put forth, even on Healthcare fixes. These are the same democrats who whined about compassion and listening to the minority when the REPUBLICANS were in power. Like jealous middle schoolers, they came in and ran everything into the ground. Spent at 3 times the rate of the exuberant Bush/Democrat Congress for 8 years and then complain about needing more taxes because of the debt!!!!!!!!!!!———————-Martin, there still are lots of people not on the dole thinking that obama is going to “give” them everything with their working—just sit, drink shoot drugs and reproduce themselves with even worse clones. Those thinking people may actually turn the country but not stop the damage already done by the 08 election with the media’s hiding of the truth about obama from all but the persistent searchers for truth in the media.——————-Can the MSM (is the DDN mainstream anymore?) still continue the delusion? ———-They have about Sherrod. Her husband gave a talk that was the most racist thing I’ve heard, even better than Reverend WRight. Yet the media portray her and her husband as not having racist hair o their heads. ———-Will the media be able to control this Ohio election? Or will the REAL educated class be able to see through the attempts at democrat control? The media will have to use the Weatherman technique of politicizing everything to avoid discussion of the real facts: the need to reduce spending, reduce taxes over all but not necessarily immediately, and having someone who really works for the people of Ohio and not just for the Democrat party in Ohio and DC, insert pictures of Strickland pimping for Hillary and then pimping for Barry Sortero (obama).
By Davidss2
July 30, 2010 9:29 AM | Link to this
Martin wants to show us he’s an intellectual, one of the “educated class” of obamaphiles who know how to run the country. Most of us don’t sit and read. Instead we use our own thinking to figure out that Democrats have swarmed in and run things excluding and ridiculing anything the Republicans put forth, even on Healthcare fixes. These are the same democrats who whined about compassion and listening to the minority when the REPUBLICANS were in power. Like jealous middle schoolers, they came in and ran everything into the ground. Spent at 3 times the rate of the exuberant Bush/Democrat Congress for 8 years and then complain about needing more taxes because of the debt!!!!!!!!!!!———————-Martin, there still are lots of people not on the dole thinking that obama is going to “give” them everything with their working—just sit, drink shoot drugs and reproduce themselves with even worse clones. Those thinking people may actually turn the country but not stop the damage already done by the 08 election with the media’s hiding of the truth about obama from all but the persistent searchers for truth in the media.——————-Can the MSM (is the DDN mainstream anymore?) still continue the delusion? ———-They have about Sherrod. Her husband gave a talk that was the most racist thing I’ve heard, even better than Reverend WRight. Yet the media portray her and her husband as not having racist hair o their heads. ———-Will the media be able to control this Ohio election? Or will the REAL educated class be able to see through the attempts at democrat control? The media will have to use the Weatherman technique of politicizing everything to avoid discussion of the real facts: the need to reduce spending, reduce taxes over all but not necessarily immediately, and having someone who really works for the people of Ohio and not just for the Democrat party in Ohio and DC, insert pictures of Strickland pimping for Hillary and then pimping for Barry Sortero (obama). Ohio deserves better.
By joe_mamma
July 30, 2010 10:38 AM | Link to this
Allan Lichtman is a lib. Martin is a lib. Libs love taking people and inserting them into mathematical models. Why? Because they think we need to be managed and steered.
By Max
July 30, 2010 11:28 AM | Link to this
Is the world divided up into just two groups; liberals and conservatives? If so, that explains a lot…..