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Donald Trump's return to the White House has surprised many, but few were as shocked perhaps as Allan Lichtman, the famous professor of history who had accurately predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1984 using his “13 keys” system.
Two months before the November election, Prof Lichtman announced that his 13 keys, looking at various foreign policy and domestic issues, as well as other public mood indicators, showed Vice President Kamala Harris would be the 47th US president.
That prediction evaporated on Tuesday night, as it became clear Mr Trump was on his way to a victory. “Look, my prediction for this presidential election was wrong, I own up to it,” Prof Lichtman said in a short video posted to Instagram and X, a day after Mr Trump's victory.
Prof Lichtman explained he was taking time off to rest and said he would soon perform a postmortem examination on his prediction system. “My aim is to is to assess why the keys were wrong and what we can learn from this era,” he added.
On Thursday, a more energetic Prof Lichtman explained the changes he might need to make to his model to keep it relevant in the future.
“I was far from the only forecaster to be wrong,” he said during his live-stream show, referring to other pollsters and prediction models. “It's always possible that events could be so significant in a given election to change the pattern of history, and I think that's what happened here.”
Prof Lichtman noted the Democratic Party's public criticism of President Joe Biden following his disastrous debate against Mr Trump in June. “If you trash a sitting president so badly, that's going to taint anybody associated with that president,” he said, referring to Ms Harris.
The fact Ms Harris did not have to run in any primary meant it was difficult for him to decide whether to award her the “no contest” key. He added that his system relies on a pragmatic and rational electorate, and that perhaps the prolific amount of disinformation on social media meant voters might have become irrational and impractical, rendering the keys inaccurate.
“Over the next four years, I'll be looking closely at whether or not the fundamental premises still hold,” he said, noting that he was open to suggestions from others about how to improve the system.
Through his continuing YouTube live-streamed series of political science discussions, Prof Lichtman has not been shy about criticising Mr Trump over his policies and rhetoric. Yet Prof Lichtman has insisted repeatedly that he has never let his own personal political leanings or feelings affect his predictions, pointing out that he has predicted the victories of Republicans Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush. Prof Lichtman also unofficially consulted Mr Reagan’s re-election campaign back in 1984.
As interest in the 2024 presidential election cycle reached a feverish pitch several months ago, so too did the viewership of Prof Lichtman’s YouTube channel where he regularly provided updates on his 13 keys system as well as other musings on current events.
It currently has more than 160,000 subscribers, and his election night live-stream received 1.2 million cumulative views. That show, which lasted more than five hours, also saw the professor become increasingly alarmed by the election results that contradicted his prediction.
The usual discussion on the show between Prof Lichtman and his son, Sam, turned eerily quiet at times as they each tried to digest the results showing Mr Trump with a stronger than expected performance. “Good thing I have nothing to do tomorrow,” Prof Lichtman told viewers as his fatigue became clear and the vote count showed Mr Trump closing in on 270 electoral votes, the threshold needed to win.
Weeks before election night, Prof Lichtman said his prediction of a Harris win prompted vitriolic and threatening feedback from some people. He had never faced such angry political rhetoric in 40 years of predictions, he added.
“It has to do with the kind of toxic politics since the advent of Donald Trump. We had nothing like that before Donald Trump,” he said.
Interestingly enough, it was Prof Lichtman's 2016 prediction of a Trump victory, a prediction that went against many polls and pundit opinions at the time, that put him on the map and made him an international political media darling.
That prediction led to the American University professor doing hundreds of interviews with media outlets.
Earthquake origins of the 13 keys
Prof Lichtman's 13-keys model is the result of a similar model that was used to predict earthquakes.
“Vladimir Keilis-Borok and I collaborated,” he said, referring to the late Russian geophysicist with whom he struck up a friendship while at the California Institute of Technology.
“We were both distinguished visiting scholars and he had always wanted to use his earthquake methodology of pattern recognitions for politics, so he teamed up with me, an expert in American politics, the presidency and history, and we became the odd couple of American political research.”
Mr Keilis-Borok died in 2013, but his ideas live on with the current discussion of the 13-keys predictive model.
As for Prof Lichtman, it is not all politics all of the time for the distinguished scholar and political science celebrity. 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.
Explained: 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 5 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 or the first-term Reagan Revolution.
- 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 upon the president
- Foreign or military failure: There is no major failure during the term comparable to Pearl Harbor 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 Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan.
- Challenger charisma: The challenger party candidate is not a national hero comparable to Ulysses Grant or Dwight Eisenhower and is not an inspirational candidate comparable to Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan.
– Source: Allan Lichtman, The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency
