As the U.S. Presidential election looms just two short months in the future, one prognosticator is ready to once again flex the accuracy of his predictions – a nearly 100% success rate across almost 40 years – as he picks who he believes will be elected to the White House in 2024.
Allan Lichtman, a 77-year-old historian and professor at American University, doesn’t base his predictions on polls or pundits. Rather, he uses a system he co-created in 1981, one that has accurately predicted the winner in the race for the Presidency in every election since 1984 except one.
Lichtman talked about his system, which even correctly predicted Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 when many others were caught by surprise, with the New York Times. Lichtman said it comes down to just over a dozen factors that have never steered him wrong to date.
“'They are 13 big picture, true-false questions that tap into the strength and performance of the White House party,” Lichtman told the Times.
Lichtman’s keys are midterm gains, incumbency, primary contest, third party, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, White House scandal, incumbent charisma, challenger charisma, foreign policy failure, and foreign policy success, and he says deciphering those tea leaves tells him who will win.
The only time Lichtman’s litmus test proved fallible is a source of annoyance for him – he predicted Vice President Al Gore would win the heavily-disputed 2000 election that installed George W. Bush as President.
“'It wasn't my mistake... It was Florida that screwed up, that based on the intent of voters... because of ballots that were tossed, that wrote in Gore and punched in Gore, Gore should have won that election going away,” Lichtman said in a video on his YouTube channel.
As for 2024, Lichtman’s 13 keys point to Vice President Kamala Harris as the ultimate victor in her electoral battle against former President Donald Trump.
We’ll all learn in November if Lichtman’s two-decade hot streak continues.