“It is very difficult to make a prediction, specially about the future.”
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Sam Goldwyn Mayer
The lack of substance in the Pakistani commentariat does not need any elaboration. But apparently it does, given how much TV pundits are mobbed at social events by non-journalists, all whom up want to know what is really happening on the national scene.
A casual look at the daily routine of these pundits would reveal that they spend almost no time on research, following instead the “park and bark” model of punditry. The program producers, assistant producers and associate producers don’t get to do much research either and the bulk of their time is spent in guest management and MCR management.
Be that as it may, a general proximity to the movers and shakers might give the pundits access to at least some information. An off-the-cuff (and off the record) remark might give them some juicy factoid. But on the question of understanding an overarching zeitgeist and, through that, making predictions about the future, the local talking heads are hopeless. Don’t get me wrong here: any anger that we can harbour towards them on this front is on account of them not acknowledging their limitations and nothing else; the enterprise itself is an extremely difficult undertaking and it is unreasonable to expect anyone to have the answers.
Just how difficult the exercise is was made obvious most recently in the US elections. Now the US is certainly a state where psephology as a science is practised with great dedication. And the pollsters there do their work with far more dedication than their counterparts in this neck of the woods. Not only are their questionnaires far more robust in nature, their sample set is also huge. Not to mention very representative of the demographic contours of their polity.
Yet, they squarely got it wrong. The number crunchers, political scientists, pundits, everyone got it wrong.
There were, of course, a handful of people who famously didn’t get it wrong. These include historian Allan Lichtman. Yes, historian. Not pollster or political scientist.
Once, when having dinner with a leading geophysicist, who was the global authority on seismology, Lichtman was asked to take a cue from the science of predicting earthquakes and apply it to the world of politics. Initially sceptical, Lichtman did put a rubric of sorts together by 1981. It was a neat little algorithm consisting of 12 “keys”, which later on added an extra thirteenth.
Lichtman applied it to all elections from 1860 onwards for the popular vote in the US presidential elections. The model held true. And it predicted correctly, the elections of 1984 and 1988.
Back in 1992, George HW Bush had an amazing approval rating. And he had a successful Gulf War under his belt. He was considered a shoo-in for reelection. The Democrats, however, sure of their defeat, couldn’t well concede and had to put up some candidate, but everyone from within the party was scurrying away, afraid to take one for the team. It was round about then that Lichtman received a call from the office of the then governor of Arkansas, a man relatively unknown outside of his state, asking about whether he was certain this algorithm worked……
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The Keys,
The Keys are statements that favor victory (in the popular vote count) for the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote.[7]
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Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
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Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
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Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
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Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
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Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
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Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
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Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
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Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
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Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
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Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
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Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
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Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
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Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
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The Pakistani political system has a large measure of exogenous factors at play. The same could be said of many other polities, with big business and the media boosting up non-representative factors. But in Pakistan, the role of the deep state is such that all models can be dismantled.
But at least it would be much better than the abject shots in the dark thrown by our pundits. When I say we are better off consulting the occult when it comes to predicting who will win the next elections, I am not employing idle hyperbole. The channels actually do call astrologists, numerologist, tarot readers and practitioners of other such mumbo-jumbo over to predict winners.
