Allan Lichtman, an American professor of history who has correctly predicted past US presidential elections, says Vice President Kamala Harris has a path to victory in November, even though President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from the race will make things significantly more difficult for the Democratic Party.
Mr Biden announced on Sunday that he would no longer seek re-election and endorsed Ms Harris to compete against Republican nominee Donald Trump and seek a return to the White House.
Prof Lichtman uses his 13 keys prediction system to assess presidential races and says the withdrawal of Mr Biden makes things challenging for the Democrats.
“He's out, so they lose the incumbency key, but they still can retain the contest key,” said Prof Lichtman, explaining that if Ms Harris wins two thirds of delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention, she would have the party contest key.
“If the Democrats grow a spine and become smart, they will unite behind Harris as the consensus nominee and preserve the contest key, and forfeit only the single incumbency key,” he said during his YouTube show, just hours after Mr Biden's announcement.
Prof Lichtman has become something of a political science celebrity, with his YouTube channel attracting more than 52,000 subscribers who eagerly await announcements regarding his electoral predictions.
“There are still four shaky keys on which I haven't made my call – third party, social unrest, foreign policy failure and foreign policy success,” he explained, before returning to the importance of a smooth handover at the Democratic Party's convention in Chicago.
An internal party fight would matter “a great deal” to the outcome of the election, he said.
By any objective standard, Ms Harris is the front-runner, but with weeks to go before the convention, there is still plenty of time for speculation to swirl and other candidates to announce a run for the Democratic nomination and seek the support of delegates.
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
After Mr Biden’s incoherent debate performance in June prompted calls for him to end his run for re-election, Prof Lichtman warned that such a move would jeopardise the incumbency key in his election prediction system, potentially giving the momentum to Mr Trump.
Prof Lichtman, who rose to international prominence in 2016 when he correctly predicted the election of Mr Trump, had not been shy about criticising those who called for Mr Biden to drop out.
“All of those pundits and journalists and political operatives who say Biden should drop out have absolutely no track record in predicting elections,” he said several weeks ago.
“Yet they claim to know what the Democrats should be doing to win this election, and once again, they’re trapped into looking at the polls. And all those same experts tracking the polls told us Hillary Clinton couldn’t lose.”
Confidence vacuum
Several weeks ago, Prof Lichtman said he felt it would be a strategic mistake for Mr Biden to step aside in the election race, and suggested he should resign as President, allowing Ms Harris to take office.
“Kamala Harris, much younger, no issue about her mental sharpness, would become President, that would check off the incumbency key, and Biden would release all his delegates to support Harris at the convention to avoid an internal party fight, and that would also check off the contest key,” he added.
That scenario has not quite panned out. Mr Biden made it clear that he would see out his term.
He has thrown his support behind his Vice President, which could help to give Mrs Harris momentum before the party convention.
But an uncertain and potentially chaotic event, similar to the 1968 Democratic convention held in Chicago after the assassination of Robert F Kennedy, could create a confidence vacuum and waste campaign resources, potentially giving Mr Trump an easier path to the White House.
Who is Allan Lichtman and what has he predicted?
While he was known in various political science circles for much of his career, Prof Lichtman broke through to the mainstream before the 2016 US presidential election when he accurately predicted Mr Trump would defeat heavily favoured Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
That prediction went against many polls and analyses at the time.
Shortly after Mr Trump won the race to the White House, he sent Prof Lichtman a signed note. “Professor, congrats, good call,” it said.
Prof Lichtman was also among the first to predict that Mr Trump would be impeached.
As for the 2024 US presidential election, Prof Lichtman has said he is not yet ready to lock in a prediction. “I have not made final prediction,” he said previously on his YouTube channel. “I hope to make it about the same time as I made it in 2020, which was August.”
Prof Lichtman has also been critical of polls, insisting that they hold little predictive value at this stage in the election race.
“That's the same kind of mistake that led the pollsters and pundits to be so dramatically wrong in 2016, to be wrong in 1988 and to be wrong in 2012,” he said.
Rise to prominence
Prof Lichtman made several media appearances after he predicted Mr Trump's election win in 2016. He has since been interviewed by media outlets all over the world, all seeking to gain insights that do not necessarily focus on polling.
He has correctly predicted every US election since 1984, with one discrepancy – 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 and, while 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 ample 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 successful series of victories on popular US game show, Tic Tac Dough.
“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.”
