American University Professor Allan Lichtman chose The New York Times to release his 2024 forecast regarding who will win the presidential contest this year. Dubbed by The Times as the "prophet of presidential elections" and often referred to as the "Nostradamus of presidential contests," Lichtman posted his selection to the public with great fanfare. However, being tagged an election prediction guru has its drawbacks – especially when you are wrong. Drum roll, please.
Kamala Harris, he asserted, will be the next president of the United States.
Using a somewhat subjective and rather unusual calculation of 13 key points that he designed, the 77-year-old has been right all but once in the last 40 years, so there's no disputing his track record. The race chosen incorrectly was 2000, when he called it for Al Gore instead of George W. Bush.
The professor's method eschews polling data and instead focuses on 13 true-or-false questions that he developed with a Russian geophysicist in 1981. If six or more of those questions come up false, then the incumbent party will lose, and the challenger will take the Oval Office. It sounds simple enough, but the questions involve some value judgments that leave them open to personal interpretation. This year, because of many anomalies in the race, is particularly challenging to answer in a nonpartisan manner.
For example, question three asks: True or false: “The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.” Technically, that's false, but since the incumbent party vice president is running in the president's place, does that count? Here's another one: True or false: “There is no significant third party or independent campaign.” Technically, that's true because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump. But Cornel West and Jill Stein are still running. Neither of them has hit the 10% threshold Lichtman says he needs for the answer to be true, but it would be wrong to say that there is no significant challenge for the two main party candidates this year.
Then there are other questions like this one: True or false: “There was no sustained social unrest during the term.” Do the pro-Palestinian protests qualify as "sustained social unrest"? Just because school was out this summer does not mean college students won't be taking to the streets once again this fall.
Lichtman -- Putting His Method to the Test
Substack author Sasha Stone has challenged Lichtman's prediction. "He plays fast and loose with the rules to deliver Team Oligarchy what they want, but Harris can't get to 8 true keys; therefore, according to him, she loses." Stone methodically went through the 13 Keys and came up with only eight or more keys (or true answers) for Kamala Harris to become the first female president. In contrast, when she took the test, she got four true answers and nine false. That means that Trump would win, and she noted, "If you go by Lichtman's keys, Trump will not only win, but he will win in a landslide." So, who's right – Sasha or Lichtman? We decided to run the keys quiz up the Liberty Nation News flagpole for a test case. We asked four of our authors to take Lichtman's exam, and here's what happened:
These results indicate that three of our four authors have Trump in the winning column, and one has Harris winning. However, the real issue is that their results demonstrate a wide variation of false answers — between five and ten. As one commenter sarcastically observed on Lichtman's X account, "His whole thing was literally, ‘Hey, these baseball players are really good. Here's a list of their statistical records. I bet if one team hired all of them, they'd probably win.’" Thus, it appears Lichtman's 13 keys may not be keys at all. But he's on record now, so it will become apparent in November whether he continues his winning streak or, like the Bush/Gore election, has to put this one in the loss column.
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If you'd like to take the Lichtman test, click here.
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