The election forecaster who accurately predicted the last nine out of 10 presidential elections has released his final prediction on who will win the 2024 presidential election.
Historian Allan Lichtman believes Vice President Kamala Harris will be the 47th President of the United States, he said on his YouTube channel on Tuesday. He previously predicted Harris would win in a video op-ed for the New York Times in September.
“Nothing has changed to change my prediction that I made on Sept. 5, in defiance of the polls,” Lichtman said in the video.
Referred to by Newsweek as the “Nostradamus” of presidential elections, Lichtman has forecasted presidential election results for 40 years. He was incorrect in his 2000 election prediction — that former Vice President Al Gore would win over George W. Bush, who instead succeeded Bill Clinton as president.
The American University historian relies on 13 true-or-false questions called “keys.” Based on these questions, eight true “keys” favored Harris with three false “keys” favoring Trump.
Two “keys” focused on foreign policy failure or success were a toss-up, he said.
Lichtman bases his system “on history,” he said. While robust, he said “you can‘t know it in advance that there’d be something so cataclysmic and so unprecedented to break the pattern of history.”
Instead of getting butterflies in his stomach, Lichtman said this year he has a “flock of crows in my stomach.”
Lichtman has faced criticism for his predictions in the past. Pollster and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver called the professor’s “keys” “totally arbitrary” in an X post. Lichtman clamped back and wrote that Silver “claims to have applied my keys to predict a Trump victory. He doesn’t have the faintest idea how to turn the keys,” in a response on the platform.
“If you don’t know what they’re talking about this whole exchange looks like two wizards bickering,” Capitol Forum reporter Paul McLeod wrote on X with a screenshot of the exchange.
Silver‘s website shows Harris with a 1.2-point lead over Trump, with Harris at 47.9% versus Trump’s 46.7%.
Lichtman’s 13 keys are:
- Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the House than after the previous midterm elections.
- Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
- Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
- Third-party: There is no significant campaign from a third-party or independent candidate.
- Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
- Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
- Policy change: Incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
- Social unrest: No sustained social unrest during the term.
- Scandal: Incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
- Foreign/military failure: Incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
- Foreign/military success: Incumbent administration achieves major success in foreign or military affairs.
- Incumbent charisma: Incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
- Challenger charisma: Challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
