Can Kamala Harris win the 2024 US election? Allan Lichtman makes his final prediction

Famous election predictor says Democratic presidential hopeful will defeat Donald Trump

Famous election predictor Allan Lichtman has made his official prediction for the 2024 US Presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. AP Photo

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Allan Lichtman, the professor of history who has predicted every US election since 1984, said that Kamala Harris will defeat Donald Trump and become the 47th president of the United States.

“The Democrats will hold on to the White House and Kamala Harris will be the next President of the United States,” Prof Lichtman said in a video interview with The New York Times.

“At least that's my prediction for this race, but the outcome is up to you,” he added.

According to Prof Lichtman, Donald Trump has only so far secured three prediction issue keys from his system, compared to eight keys secured by Kamala Harris.

Two of the keys - foreign policy failure and foreign policy success - are yet to be decided by Prof Lichtman,

"Even if both foreign policy keys flip false, that would mean there are only five negative keys, which would not be enough for Donald Trump to regain the White House," he said in The New York Times video.

For Ms Harris to lose in his prediction apparatus, at least six of those prediction keys would have had to favour Mr Trump.

While widely known in political science circles for many years, Prof Lichtman and his 13 keys model for US presidential election predictions gained significant attention following his 2016 prediction that Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton.

At the time, the prediction of a Trump victory went against many of the polls and pundits.

Shortly after his electoral college victory in 2016, President Trump sent Prof Lichtman a congratulatory note that read: “Professor, congrats, good call.”

Prof Lichtman, however, was also among the first to predict that Mr Trump would be impeached, which came to fruition in 2021, shortly after the insurrection he incited following his electoral defeat to Mr Biden in the 2020 election.

He also correctly predicted the election victory of Joe Biden in 2020.

It had seemed all but certain that a rematch between Mr Biden, the Democratic incumbent, and Mr Trump, the Republican nominee would face off again. But a sometimes incoherent debate performance in June led to concern among many Democrats, ultimately prompting Mr Biden to not seek a second term.

Just before President Biden announced his plans to not run for re-election, Prof Lichtman said if he stepped aside, Democrats would lose the valuable incumbency key in his prediction system, and therefore potentially create a path to victory for Mr Trump.

Prof Lichtman did, however, lay out a “Plan B” that would minimise friction following Mr Biden's pivotal decision.

“He should resign the presidency for the good of the country, that would be greatly applauded by the American people."

While Mr Biden did not resign as president, Prof Lichtman later pointed out that the Democrats quickly rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris, therefore preserving the contest key in his prediction system.

Also adding potential woes Ms Harris might face in the context of Prof Lichtman's prediction system, was the global market sell-off earlier in August which saw Japan's Nikkei dropping 12 per cent in one day, and the Dow Jones shedding more than 1000 points.

Had that global economic stock market performance continued, Mr Lichtman's short-term economic key could have turned against Ms Harris, but the global sell-off proved to lack the staying power to make much of an electoral impact, he said.

“We are not in a recession,” Mr Lichtman said in an earlier edition of his YouTube live-stream session. “Indicators and warnings of a recession are not a recession, so at this point the short-term economy key has not turned against the White House party.”

Perhaps reflecting Prof Lichtman's rising political celebrity status and the stratospheric interest in the 2024 US presidential election, his YouTube page where he regularly posts prediction updates and analysis now has 95,000 subscribers and has racked up millions of video views.

“In effect, every political science model is based upon historical data and historical analysis,” he said, explaining and defending his system to his YouTube followers several weeks ago.

“The difference in my model is that it has a vastly more extensive record than any other political science model, as far as I know.”

Critics and acclaim

Amid the lucrative world of pollsters and polling organisations who often charge top dollar for their analysis, Prof Lichtman's system stands out for its relative simplicity.

He routinely dismisses polls taken months before US presidential elections as having little, if any predictive value, and says his keys system is rooted in historical US political trends dating back more than 160 years.

Prof Lichtman developed the system in 1981 with his collaborator, mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok. Mr Keilis-Borok, originally from Moscow, had developed a similar system years before to predict earthquakes.

“They developed the keys based on their analysis of trends in presidential campaigns since 1860,” he says in an article on the website of American University in Washington, where Prof Lichtman is a distinguished professor of history.

Not everyone, however, is a believer or advocate in Prof Lichtman's keys system.

Prominent statistician and journalist Nate Silver, described the 13 keys method as “superficial”, in 2011.

“I wrote him [Mr Silver] a 30-page response … and offered to write a joint article with him,” Prof Lichtman said. He added that he wanted to write about how two analysts using two totally different methods could ultimately come to the same conclusion.

FiveThirtyEight, founded by Mr Silver and operated by ABCNews, ultimately published Prof Lichtman's response, but Mr Silver did not directly address it.

“I never heard a word from him,” Prof Lichtman said in an interview with The National in 2023.

Mr Silver, who now composes a polling newsletter, Silver Bulletin, recently critiqued Prof Lichtman's suggestion that President Biden remains in the race shortly after his disastrous debate performance against Mr Trump.

“None of the 13 keys is that the President is unable to reliably complete a sentence, but that seems salient to diagnosing his chances for re-election,” Mr Silver wrote on X.

Prof Lichtman didn't mince words with his response.

“The issue with Nate Silver is he’s a compiler of polls, a clerk. He has no fundamental basis in history and elections. If we bounced presidents based on perceived physical ailments we would have bounced FDR, Reagan, and JFK,” he wrote.

Mr Lichtman also went toe to toe with liberal political commentator and media personality Cenk Uygur, who dismissed the keys system as too rigid, and not as predictive as Mr Lichtman claims.

His debate with Mr Uyger was contentious and animated at times, ultimately with Mr Lichtman pointing to his track record for his keys system.

“He [Mr Uyger] fails to understand the basis of the keys, which is that it's governing, not campaigning that counts, you can't predict elections from campaigning alone, what keys measure is the strength and performance of the White House party and that's what counts,” said Prof Lichtman.

How does Lichtman's 13 keys model work?

The 13 keys to the White House is an index of true or false responses to a set of questions, based on a simple pattern recognition algorithm.

“True” answers favour the re-election of the incumbent, while “false” answers favour the challenger. When six or more of the statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose.

Lichtman's 13 keys to the White House

Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.

Contest: The candidate is nominated on the first ballot and wins at least two-thirds of the delegate votes.

Incumbency: The sitting President is the party candidate.

Third party: A third-party candidate wins at least five per cent of the popular vote.

Short-term economy: The National Bureau of Economic Research has either not declared a recession, or has declared it over before the election.

Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds the mean growth during the previous two terms.

Policy change: The administration achieves a major policy change during the term comparable to the New Deal, under Franklin Roosevelt, or the first-term revolution under Ronald Reagan.

Social unrest: There is no social unrest during the term that is comparable to the upheavals of the post-civil war Reconstruction or of the 1960s, and is sustained or raises deep concerns about the unravelling of society.

Scandal: There is no broad recognition of a scandal that directly touches on the President.

Foreign or military failure: There is no major failure during the term comparable to Pearl Harbour or the Iran hostage crisis that appears to significantly undermine America's national interests or threaten its standing in the world.

Foreign or military success: There is a major success during the term comparable to the winning of the Second World War or the Camp David Accords that significantly advances America's national interests or its standing in the world.

Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is a national hero comparable to Ulysses Grant or Dwight Eisenhower, or is an inspirational candidate comparable to Mr Roosevelt or Mr Reagan.

Challenger charisma: The challenger party candidate is not a national hero comparable to Mr Grant or Mr Eisenhower and is not an inspirational candidate comparable to Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan.

– Source: Allan Lichtman, The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency

Presidential prediction celebrity status

Prof Lichtman made many media appearances after he predicted Mr Trump's election win in 2016. In the subsequent years, when he accurately predicted a victory for Mr Biden in 2020, he has since been interviewed by hundreds media outlets all over the world, all seeking to gain insights that do not necessarily focus on polling.

While he has correctly predicted every US election since 1984 based on the popular vote, there is one discrepancy that stands out – the 2000 election between Al Gore, US vice president at the time, and George W Bush, who was governor of Texas.

Prof Lichtman predicted a victory for Mr Gore, but although he won the popular vote, there was controversy over vote tallies in Florida. A Supreme Court decision gave Mr Bush the electoral college victory and the presidency, a controversy that still generates debate to this day.

“Gore, based on the actual verdict of the voters, was the winner. What happened in Florida was voter suppression,” Prof Lichtman told The National last year. “And I wasn't the only one to come to that conclusion.”

It is not politics all the time for Prof Lichtman, however. He is also an avid distance runner and has written several books.

In 1981, he also had a series of victories on the popular US game show Tic Tac Dough, hosted by famous host and disc jockey, Wink Martindale.

“I won more than $100,000 in cash and prizes on that show,” he said. “I was on for four weeks and defeated 20 opponents.

His lengthy run on the show helped to prepare him for his countless TV and media interviews later in his career, he added. “Not only do you have to know a lot, but you can't freeze,” he recalled. “It takes a lot of stamina, they taped five shows in one day, and there were always technical glitches and sometimes the recordings would go late into the night.”