Due to his extraordinary correctness in predicting the outcomes of the U.S. presidential election races, the American historian and a political commentator, Allan Lichtman is well known as the “Nostradamus of Presidential Election Predictions.”
Since 1984, Allan Lichtman has been flawless in predicting winners for all but one presidential election, utilizing an innovative model he created and coined the “Keys to the White House”
This model has 13 yes or no questions in which the political tendencies and the sitting political party’s performance are evaluated thus allowing Lichman to make his predictions based on history rather than on the campaigns or poll data.
Early life and career
Born on March 18, 1947 in New York City, Allan Lichtman, a historian, obtained his PhD in the history field from Harvard University. The greater part of his academic work was centered on American University in Washington, DC where he focuses on US political history.
His academic expertise includes, but is not limited to, these areas: history of the American politics, the politics of presidential elections in the United States. His educational qualifications profusely enriched with the political melodrama helped him in developing a successful mechanism of prediction of elections and voting behavior.
The keys to the White House
The predictive model known as the “Keys to the White House” was jointly developed with geophysicist Vladimir Kogan in early of 1980s, as one of the researchers’ modelling frameworks. It is based on 13 keys covering a whole range of aspects and factors which are important in the political environment such as midterm performance of the incumbent party, presence of significant contesting candidates, state of the economy, and absence of scandals. Each key must be marked as either true or false; when there are six or more false keys the party in power will loose the election.
The 13 keys are as follows:
- Party Mandate: The party in premise deficits midterm approval rates in the House after Investigative Committee elections.
- Nomination Contest: There is absolutely no credible threat to the party’s control of its nomination.
- Incumbency: The head of the operation is from the majority party, the sitting president.
- Third-party Factor: There is no significant candidate outside of the main political parties.
- Short-term Economic Stability: During the election no period of recession occurs.
- Long-term Economic Growth: Real increase in PC income is exactly equal to or exceeds the very average increase in the past two terms.
- Policy Shift: The new government makes radical changes in the general policies of the country.
- Social Stability: No government policies succeed in preventing social instability for an extended period of time.
- Scandal-Free: The present government has not experienced any serious scandals.
- Foreign/Military Failures: The present government has not suffered any such major faults particularly in their foreign or military affairs.
- Foreign/Military Successes: The present government scores quite enough a number of their goals in transnational, or war, affairs.
- Incumbent Charm: The candidate of government’s party is usually popular or has the status of national hero.
- Challenger Appeal: The candidate of the opposite party does not have such good popular appeal.
Trump vs Harris
In his latest prediction for the 2024 presidential election, Lichtman does not think Donald Trump will be president of the US again as he believes Kamala Harris will beat him and keep the White House in the Democratic Party hands. He notes that this is stout the matrix of 13 keys assessed. Out of 13 keys, Harris has 8 where Trump has 3. At the same time, Lichtman does not dismiss many other factors that are of great importance in every election. Perhaps light suggest, all other such factors suggest that it is non change radical such outside society.
For one thing, as Allan Lichtman took care to note, “the Democrats have shed their majority in the House after the midterms of 2022,” which makes them key false the Party Mandate. However, he observed, Harris enjoys the lack of real third-party opponents, and quite healthy numbers in employment and economy that work in favor of her candidacy. As a rule, he departs from traditional political analysis which includes polling and electioneering techniques, predicting the results based on historical trends and the inner workings related to elections instead.
Analytical scope and prediction Trajectory
Allan Lichtman’s predictions have always been a source of interest and discussion – in particular for their precision. He was one of the very few persons in the analytical arena to predict a win for Donald Trump in the presidential elections of 2016 even when most people and especially the pollsters assumed that Hillary Clinton would take the day. His ability to predict Joe Biden would win the presidency in 2020 would cement him as one of the best election predictors.
