US POLITCS
The “Nostradamus of presidential elections” predicts who will win in 2024: Who did Allan Lichtman pick?
Historian Allan Lichtman has released his highly anticipated “Keys to the White House” projection for 2024.
While political analysts today focus on poll numbers, voter focus groups, policy platforms, and campaign strategies to evaluate the state of the race, historian Allan Lichtman has developed his own method for predicting the victor of general elections. The “Keys to the White House” model contains thirteen true-false statements that help to determine which candidate has an advantage in the race. The statements are based on common indicators of public sentiment and voter behavior. For example, there is a statement on incumbency, “the sitting president represents the incumbent party.” If this is true, the incumbent party is given the advantage.
Since 1984, the “Keys to the White House” model developed by Lichtman and geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok has predicted nine of the ten last elections, with the only one incorrecting forecasted being that of Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000. However, some political analysts accuse Lichtman of overselling the model’s power. In 2016, Lichtman predicted that Donald Trump would win, but the model only considers the popular vote, which Donald Trump lost.
“Keys to the White House” 2024
Now that President Biden has dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, Lichtman has recalculated his prediction. Based on his model, Kamala Harris shows promise of winning in November, with eight of the four statements favoring her.
The four statements that favor the former president are:
- Key 1: Party mandate: Republicans won the majority in the House of Representatives in the last midterm elections in 2022.
- Key 3: Incumbent seeking re-election: President Biden is not running which removes the incumbancy boost for the Democrats.
- Key 10: No foreign or military failure: Litchman considers the Gaza, and the support provided to Israel in its war on the 2 million people trapped in the strip to be a failure.
- Key 12: Uncharismatic incumbent: Lichtman does not see Harris as a FDR or Ronald Reagan figure and cites her 2020 performance for his choice in defining her as "uncharismatic."
Meanwhile, those that favor Vice President Harris are:
- Key 2: No primary contest: Kamala Harris faced no significant contester after announcing her intention to seek the nomination.
- Key 4: No third party: Now that RFK Jr has exited the race the threat of a third party is far more diminished.
- Keys 5 and 6: Strong long-term and short-term economy: Though inflation remains high, the economy continues to grow and unemployment remains at an historic low.
- Key 7: Major policy change: Lichtman has marked this as true for Harris because of the pieces of legistlation passed under the Biden-Harris adminstration (i.e., the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act).
- Key 8: No social unrest: Though hundreds of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets across the country to voice their opposition to the Adminstration's policy towards Israel, Lichtman doesn't think those actions are on the scale of protest movements of the 60s, 70s, or that which took place in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd.
- Key 9: No scandal: No major scandals cloud Harris' chances, according to
- Keys 10 and 11: Foreign or military success: Though he credits Biden with success in Ukraine, he believes some of the credit can be shared with Harris and will benefit her.
- Keys 13: Candidate charisma: He does not consider Donald Trump to be a generational figure that brings people together. Those who love Trump believe he is charismatic, and those who don't, can't stand to listen to him.
Though these are Litchman’s finalized projections, there is still time for the conditions to shift before November. If a ceasefire and hostage deal is agreed to before the election, the Harris campaign could see a massive boost in their chances.