This man predicted all recent presidential election winners. Will he be right this time?

Andres Oppenheimer

Allan J. Lichtman, the American University historian who predicted the outcome of virtually all recent U.S. elections and became famous when he accurately forecast — against what pollsters were saying — that Donald Trump would win in 2016, was very cautious when I interviewed him about the 2024 presidential race.

But, while cautioning that he will issue his official prediction after Labor Day, he gave me a good hint of who has the best chances of winning the race between Democratic hopeful Kamala Harris and Trump.

Lichtman, who has developed a system of 13 keys to predict elections — which he says is more accurate than polls — told me that “a lot would have to go wrong for the Democratic Party to lose.” Translation: as of now, Harris has the best chances of winning.

Lichtman’s prediction system consists of 13 questions that have to be answered each with a “true” or “false.” If the incumbent party gets a “false” in six of the 13 keys, it will lose the White House.

Since he started announcing his forecasts 20 years ago, he was right in nine of the last 10 elections. He says he was actually right in all 10 of them, because the 2000 election was atypical: his pick, Al Gore, won the popular vote, but the Supreme Court gave the election to George W. Bush.

Among Lichtman’s 13 keys are whether there is an incumbent president running for office, whether there is a strong third-party candidate and whether the economy is doing well.

“Right now the Democrats are down in only three keys” of the six that would be needed for them to lose the election, Lichtman told me. The Democrats are down in the “mandate” key, because they lost the House in the 2022 elections, in the “incumbency” key, because Joe Biden is no longer the candidate, and in the “charisma” key, because it’s too early to tell whether Harris is charismatic, he explained.

Won’t Trump win the “charisma” key, as horrible a human being as many of us think he is? I asked Licthman.

“He doesn’t fit the definition of the (charisma) key,” Lichtman responded, “The keys require that you be broadly appealing. You can’t just appeal to a narrow base like Trump.”

Lichtman says that he doesn’t pay attention to the polls because they are just a snapshot of the present, which is not useful to predict what will happen on Election Day.

In addition, just as pollsters underestimated the pro-Trump vote in 2016, they may now be under-estimating the pro-Democratic vote, he said.

“Pollsters say, ‘You know, our error margin is randomly plus or minus 3% approximately.’ But that’s pure statistical error,” he said. “People may lie. They may not have made up their mind yet. They may change their mind.”

As for surveys on donors’ campaign contributions, crowd sizes or debates, he told me, “Remember, based on conventional measures, Hillary Clinton should have won in 2016: She raised more money, had more ads, won all the debates, had a better organization. And, of course, she lost.”

Will Lichtman be right this time again? I have no intention of getting into the election forecasting business, but here’s my humble guess: Harris will easily win the popular vote, and Trump — if he loses in the electoral college — will dispute the results.

He is already preparing the ground for contesting the election by saying Harris staged an alleged illegal “coup” against Biden’s nomination, still refuses to accept his defeat in the 2020 elections, and routinely praises the insurrectionists who occupied the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to revert the election results.

On top of that, Trump has not yet committed to accepting a potential adverse result in this year’s elections. He doesn’t play by the rules of democracy, or decency. So, whatever happens, my prediction is that it will be a big mess.