OK, so you’ve predicted the winner of nine out of the last 10 presidential elections. Fair enough. How many times can you be wrong about this one before we stop listening to you?
That’s the question about Allan Lichtman, an American University professor of history. Lichtman, as USA Today notes, developed his “13 keys” system to the presidency with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981 and has managed to accurately predict even Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.
Fine. That being said, the man is whiffing spectacularly this year, and not for any want of trying. Just a day after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate appearance on June 27, he went on CNN to say that the Democrats shouldn’t replace him because debates don’t matter in the “13 keys” system.
Well, that didn’t pan out. But don’t worry — he’s still riding high on the Democrats, although he thinks they shouldn’t have switched from the guy who can’t even remember that he’s not the first black female president during interviews.
“Right now … Democrats have lost three keys” by switching to Harris, he told NewsNation Friday. However, while he’s waiting until the convention pans out to see who he’s predicting will win this one, he says the ball’s still in Kamala’s court.
In case you’re not familiar with this system, here are the 13 criteria that go into this mathematical formula Lichtman uses to determine who wins the White House: party mandate, contest, incumbency, third party, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, foreign/military failure, foreign/military success, incumbent charisma, challenger charisma.
“Under my 13 keys system, which probes the strength and performance of the White House party, how elections really work, if six or more of my keys fall against the White House party, they’re predicted losers,” he said. “Otherwise, they’re predicted winners.”
Kamala loses three keys: party mandate, incumbency, and incumbent charisma.
The first key was already lost due to the fact that the Democrats lost House seats in 2022 — although this was relatively predictable and the Democrats actually lost less seats than was anticipated, but apparently these don’t factor into Cap’n Dungeons-&-Dragons pen-and-paper method of playing out national elections.
Do you think Trump will win?
Six of the keys are already locked in for Harris, and please feel free to laugh along with me:
No primary contest (which is correct — Harris didn’t have one vote against her this primary season … nor did she receive a single primary vote), strong short-term economy, strong long-term economy (on those two: boy, having tenure in academia must be really nice and especially cushy), major policy change (“Clearly, policy under Joe Biden in virtually every realm has been fundamentally different from that of the previous administration of Donald Trump,” Lichtman says, according to USA Today, apparently failing to acknowledge that universally low approval numbers don’t necessarily mean this is viewed with uncritical adoration), no scandal (you have to be kidding me), and uncharismatic challenger (you have to be kidding me²).
In a social media post, Lichtman also said he had Harris ahead in two other categories: No third party (are polls available at your institution, sir? Do you need an internet account?) and no social unrest (the incumbent president just stepped aside as nominee because he has the brain of a chipmunk and someone just tried to kill the GOP nominee at a rally, but sure, why not?).
I plan to make my official prediction in August after the Democratic convention.
See my assessment below below on the 13 Keys Tracker on where The Keys stand NOW. Please listen to our LIVE show on 7–25–24, linked in the comments below, where we detail every Key. pic.twitter.com/pJpkpa3SzW— Allan Lichtman (@AllanLichtman) July 26, 2024
“It’s possible, but a lot would have to go wrong for Harris to lose,” Lichtman predicted.
NEW: Forecaster who has predicted almost every election since 1984, says Kamala Harris will likely win the election in November.
Allan Lichtman, who correctly predicted Trump would win in 2016 & Biden in 2020, says his forecasts point to a Harris win.
Lichtman uses ’13 keys’ to… pic.twitter.com/US6LMgvWlH
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 29, 2024
Yes. Like, perhaps they could figure out that Harris is as weak of a candidate as Joe Biden was one month ago when Lichtman assured CNN’s Abby Phillip that, don’t fret, the debate from hell didn’t really matter:
“Zero,” he said, when she asked how much the debate would matter.
“Debates are not predictive of outcomes,” Lichtman told her. “Hillary Clinton won all three debates, still lost. John Kerry won all the debates, still lost. Barack Obama got trounced 72 to 20 percent in the poll, worse than Biden, and went on to win.”
And, as for replacing Biden on the ticket because he was cognitively declining before our very eyes?
“It’s a huge mistake,” he said. “They’re not doctors. They don’t know whether Biden is physically capable of carrying out a second term or not. Remember, a lot of folks were saying the same thing about Ronald Reagan, who was, you know, 73, and age was very different then. And they said, ‘You know, he’s not capable of carrying out another term.’ He won 49 states.”
“All of these pundits and pollsters and analysts that you see on all the cable channels and all the networks have no track record in predicting elections,” he added.
“And if they come on and they claim they know how this debate is going to affect the outcome of elections, they have no idea. It’s sports talk radio. It may be entertaining, but it has no scientific basis.”
Yes. All “sports talk radio.” Which is why … pretty much every Democrat, less than one month after this was uttered, agreed Biden had no chance of winning and needed to go. But he had 11 keys! The guy was sailing to victory, at least on Licthman’s paper!
This is all well and good when Bill Clinton is playing the sax on Arsenio Hall’s late-night TV show and telling America, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Or, when John Kerry is playing at proletarian by duck-hunting in order to help him connect with blue-collar voters in 2004.
It’s slightly more difficult when you introduce the fact that the sitting president is clearly mentally infirm, that this fact was hidden from us by a White House that assiduously guarded him, and that — once outside this guard — he was revealed as completely incapable. It’s even more difficult when the only plausible alternative to him is a vice president that’s even less popular than he is.
This isn’t the sort of thing that plays out neatly on pen-and-paper from some academic’s formula. It’s a one-in-a-hundred sort of election — and the number of times Lichtman has already been wrong about it is proof that this is the proverbial “sports talk radio” caller, not the other way around.
