Allan Lichtman, the historian known for predicting the outcome of presidential elections, is explaining what the heck happened with his incorrect selection of Vice President Kamala Harris this go-round.
Before this week, the American University professor correctly predicted nine of the 10 last elections. His previous 90% success rate has declined to 81.8% after now president-elect Donald Trump decisively secured a second White House term four years after losing reelection to President Joe Biden.
“I feel like it’s been a year since Tuesday,” Lichtman said on a YouTube livestream Thursday evening hosted by his son, Samuel Lichtman. “I admit I was wrong. I called a Harris win and she didn’t win. But I was far from the only forecaster that was wrong. Most other models were wrong.”
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Even in Bucks County, which hadn’t gone with a GOP presidential candidate since George H. W. Bush in 1988, Trump has appeared to have registered a narrow victory.
In Bucks County, the unofficial vote tallies show 512 vote difference between Trump and Harris, 195,147 votes to 194,635 in Bucks County. Bucks County officials will meet next week to decide how many of at least 10,200 uncounted ballots will be added to its unofficial election totals, potentially impacting President-elect Donald Trump’s razor-thin win over Democrat Kamala Harris in the county.
While a change in vote outcome locally would have no impact on Trump’s Pennsylvania win, it highlights the increasing role in tight races of provisional ballots, a historically little used last-resort voting option.
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Lichtman shared the two major reasons his “13 Keys to the White House” prediction system failed this year, including disdain for the Biden-Harris administration and Harris’ delayed campaign start after Biden dropped out of the election on July 21. He added that Harris being the only nominee in modern history to avoid participating in primaries and caucuses was also a factor despite Democrats “doing the best they could.”
“I don’t think I called any (keys) wrong,” Lichtman said. “The contest key was rendered problematic by what went on by the Democratic Party but I don’t think you can say I called it wrong except for in retrospect. At the time it was the more reasonable call.”
He also cited an “incredible explosion of disinformation” on platforms like X where untrue statements spread at a large scale, including claims that the stock market was crashing and that the unemployment rate was at an all-time high.
Why did Lichtman predict Harris would win?
Lichtman used his longtime “13 Keys to the White House” system to form his prediction that Harris would beat Trump.
Lichtman’s “13 Keys to the White House” include:
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Key 1 (Party Mandate): After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.
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Key 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.
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Key 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.
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Key 4 (Third party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
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Key 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
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Key 6 (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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Key 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
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Key 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
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Key 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
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Key 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
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Key 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
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Key 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
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Key 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Using his system, Lichtman has correctly predicted nine of 11 presidential elections since 1984. His first blemish came when Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 election.
Is he changing his ’13 keys’ system?
Lichtman confirmed he will not be altering his 13 keys system, which he said still has a high success rate.
“I don’t think the problem was the keys themselves. You cannot change a model on the fly based on its failure in one election. The model has been built up over 41 elections,” Lichtman said.
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He said his predictions, which have often gone against most political pundits, are still a more efficient indicator than other models.
“We’ve never seen numbers like this in modern American history. Especially in light of how well the Democrats had been doing in getting out their vote up to that (point). Why all of a sudden the Democrats fall off the cliff?” Lichtman said. “But we’re going on. Maybe we’ll maybe we’ll figure it out in a future show.”
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What did Lichtman say about Nate Silver’s prediction?
Lichtman called out Nate Silver’s final 2024 forecast, which also predicted a Harris victory, in a Monday X post ahead of Election Day.
The 77-year-old historian wrote that “Nate Silver’s compilation of polls is so unreliable that he now says that who will win the presidency is down to luck.”
“It might literally wind up in the range where who’s ‘ahead’ in our final forecast is determined by luck,” Silver’s post reads. “There’s still a little bit of variance introduced by running ‘only’ 40,000 simulations (we’ll run 80,000 tonight but still…).”
Contributing: Jo Ciavaglia, Natalie Neysa Alund and Jonathan Limehouse
This story has been updated to remove a repeated line.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Allan Lichtman explains why his Harris victory prediction was wrong
