I think Ford would have beaten any Democrat bar Carter.
Allan Lichtman gave the incumbent party eight keys against them (five needed to maintain White House).
* Poor midterm performance (1974--144 seats) vs. the previous midterm (1970--180 seats)
* Nomination contest: always the kiss of death
* Poor long-term economy: real per capita doesn't exceed or equal previous two terms.
* No major policy change
* Scandal: Watergate
* No Foreign/Military Success
* Foreign/Military Failure: the Fall of Saigon
* Incumbent is not historically charismatic.

Working for the incumbent administration:
* Incumbent President running for reelection.
* No significant third party candidate.
* Economy not in recession.
* No social unrest.
* No historically charismatic challenger.

It's conceivable that Gerald Ford could have potentially won the electoral college but he was going to lose the popular vote to an opponent.
 
Allan Lichtman gave the incumbent party eight keys against them (five needed to maintain White House).
* Poor midterm performance (1974--144 seats) vs. the previous midterm (1970--180 seats)
* Nomination contest: always the kiss of death
* Poor long-term economy: real per capita doesn't exceed or equal previous two terms.
* No major policy change
* Scandal: Watergate
* No Foreign/Military Success
* Foreign/Military Failure: the Fall of Saigon
* Incumbent is not historically charismatic.

Working for the incumbent administration:
* Incumbent President running for reelection.
* No significant third party candidate.
* Economy not in recession.
* No social unrest.
* No historically charismatic challenger.

It's conceivable that Gerald Ford could have potentially won the electoral college but he was going to lose the popular vote to an opponent.

According to Walter Mondale, it was Ford's Soviet domination gaffe that halted his momentum in the final stage of the campaign and allowed Carter to win. Without that slip of the tongue, it is very possible that Ford would have won an electoral college majority (but perhaps not one in the popular vote).
 
If you look at pictures of Humphrey in 1976-78, you can see he was clearly at the end. His cancer was pretty severe by the time '76 came. But lets butterfly his cancer and he decides to run. I think he'd pick a moderate southerner to balance the ticket, so perhaps he picks Fritz Hollings (a loose cannon but was actually pretty lenient on civil rights for a deep south politician) or Fred Harris. Humphrey runs a competitive race but I don't think a 15 point margin would be possible to sustain. I think the map would look something like this on election night.
View attachment 712079
Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) / Fritz Hollings (D-SC) - 311 EVs
Gerald Ford (R-MI) / Bob Dole (R-KS) - 227 EVs
I would question some of the western states you have in Humphrey's column. It is true that Carter was not the ideal candidate for the West, but neither was Humphrey--too "old-fashioned" for the kind of young voters who propelled Jerry Brown and Gary Hart and Dick Lamm to electoral victories in state elections there. (Nor indeed was Ford the favorite Republican candidate in that region--a Reagan-Brown or Reagan-Church or Reagan-Udall matchup would be more to the taste of most Westerners.) In particular, I can't see Humphrey carrying MT (where Ford beat Carter by 7.44 points in OTL) or CO (where Ford beat Carter by 11.47 points) or even NV (where Ford beat Carter by 4.3 points). One should note that Humphrey didn't do very well in any of these states in 1968--he trailed Nixon in MT by 9.01, in CO by 9.14, and in NV by 8.16. About the three West Coast states of CA, WA, and OR I'll only say that they would have been close, and I'd say the same for NM where Humphrey did very poorly in 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_Mexico The same with OH and IL, where Carter did poorly in the suburbs of Chicago and Cleveland--but did better in the southern parts of each state than any national Democrat (except LBJ) had done in recent memory. I'm also not by any means sure Humphrey wins in MO, where Carter did very well in the rural part of the state (the map at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_presidential_election_in_Missouri looks incredible today) or IA where Humphrey had done very poorly in 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Iowa
 
Allan Lichtman gave the incumbent party eight keys against them (five needed to maintain White House).
* Poor midterm performance (1974--144 seats) vs. the previous midterm (1970--180 seats)
* Nomination contest: always the kiss of death
* Poor long-term economy: real per capita doesn't exceed or equal previous two terms.
* No major policy change
* Scandal: Watergate
* No Foreign/Military Success
* Foreign/Military Failure: the Fall of Saigon
* Incumbent is not historically charismatic.

Working for the incumbent administration:
* Incumbent President running for reelection.
* No significant third party candidate.
* Economy not in recession.
* No social unrest.
* No historically charismatic challenger.

It's conceivable that Gerald Ford could have potentially won the electoral college but he was going to lose the popular vote to an opponent.
I would take Lichtman's "keys" with a grain of salt. In 2000, he said "yes, they forecast a Gore victory, but they only refer to the *popular* vote, which Gore did win." In 2016, he said that the fact that the keys favored Trump was vindicated by Trump's Electoral College victory--even though Trump lost the popular vote..

I'm not even as sure as I once was that the Reagan challenge hurt Ford so much. Yes, it did reveal the divisions in the party, but it also got some people participating in Republican politics who had not done so before--and a majority of them did end up voting for Ford in November. . .
 
I would take Lichtman's "keys" with a grain of salt. In 2000, he said "yes, they forecast a Gore victory, but they only refer to the *popular* vote, which Gore did win." In 2016, he said that the fact that the keys favored Trump was vindicated by Trump's Electoral College victory--even though Trump lost the popular vote..

I'm not even as sure as I once was that the Reagan challenge hurt Ford so much. Yes, it did reveal the divisions in the party, but it also got some people participating in Republican politics who had not done so before--and a majority of them did end up voting for Ford in November. . .
Well, first off, the last time an incumbent party faced a primary contest and won was 1880. I don't know if Reagan's challenge was the thing that killed Ford but it's historically the kiss of death. The party never fully unified behind Ford and Reagan never campaigned for him. Richard Norton Smith, Ford's speechwriter, believed that it was the latest jobs report that really did in the Ford campaign. It dipped in the last weeks.

I do like Allan Lichtman's Keys program and have referenced it quite a few times, although Litchman himself says it doesn't forecast the popular vote victory but rather the eventual winner of the election. I think it's quite effective for discussing the mood of the country as well as the strength of the incumbency. Lichtman is also on record in referring to the 2000 election as a stolen election, which... I don't know... But what I do know is that Lichtman himself incorrectly forecast the 2016 election. He claimed that the incumbent/Democratic party lost the third party "key" but that's not true. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein together did not end up receiving more than 5% of the of the popular vote required to turn the key, which hands that key back to the incumbent party. That means Allan Lichtman's system upheld the eventual result however he was wrong in his forecasting.

What's more in doubt is whether or not Bernie Sanders' primary challenge represented a serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. Lichtman has used a few different terminologies to describe what constitutes a serious contest. It's been described as going to convention, as 60% or less of the primary popular vote, and as 2/3rds of the convention delegates. Sanders took it to the convention... but not really. Clinton won 55% of the popular vote but had it locked up very early on. She didn't have 2/3rds of the delegates but it was then made unanimous. It can really be read either way.

Anyway, I like the "Keys" system but even if one doesn't, it opens up a conversation.
 
I do like Allan Lichtman's Keys program and have referenced it quite a few times, although Litchman himself says it doesn't forecast the popular vote victory but rather the eventual winner of the election.

He's basically moved the goalposts. He used to say it predicted the popular vote winner, and used that to explain away the fact that it had failed to predict the Electoral College winner in 1876, 1888, and 2000. Only in 2016, after he predicted a Trump victory did he suddenly say that it now predicts the Electoral College winner.
 
He's basically moved the goalposts. He used to say it predicted the popular vote winner, and used that to explain away the fact that it had failed to predict the Electoral College winner in 1876, 1888, and 2000. Only in 2016, after he predicted a Trump victory did he suddenly say that it now predicts the Electoral College winner.

In my opinion, the Keys are useful to understand the "fundamentals" that generally determine the outcome of a Presidential election. While we often focus on a gaffe that embarrass a particular candidate or a certain TV ad that had a negative impact on a campaign, factors like the economy and the accomplishments by the incumbent party (or lack thereof) are ultimately more determinative. However, the Keys can hardly be taken as gospel as they have failed to predict the winner in several elections (that they merely picked the popular vote winner is irrelevant as the US uses an electoral college to chose its Presidents). Lichtman could simply admit that the Keys only predict the likely winner and there is not a 100% chance that the victor predicted by the Keys will win, but as you point out he keeps changing the criteria for a successful prediction whenever there is an election that contradicts his findings (e.g. 2000 and 2016).
 
Jeez FDR looks like Grandpa Munster in his last days

This is the last photo taken of him (the day before he died):

FDR-April-11-1945.jpg



He looks 83, not 63.
 
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