Historian with near-perfect record predicting elections dishes on ‘unprecedented situation’ in 2024
A historian who has correctly predicted 9 out of the last 10 presidential elections is keeping his powder dry on the 2024 race for now as he tries to gauge the fallout of former President Donald Trump’s conviction.
Dr. Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor at American University, surmised that it’s simply too early to understand the ramifications of Trump’s conviction, but believes his algorithm will stand.
“We have no idea yet what the impact of this is going to be,” Lichtman told Fox News Digital. “I’ll just speculate, for what it’s worth — it’s not going to fundamentally crack Trump’s base,”
“We don’t know how this might affect moderate, swing, [and] independent voters.”
Trump, 77, became the first president to be found guilty of criminal offenses last month when a New York jury voted to convict on all 34 counts against him for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments.
Lichtman maintains that the unprecedented conviction does not affect his feted prediction algorithm.
“We do have an unprecedented situation right now. We’ve never before had a former president, or, for that matter, a major party presidential candidate, even charged with a crime, much less convicted of 34 felonies. Now that does not directly affect the [algorithm],” he told the outlet.
Although Lichtman has refrained from making a prediction in the 2024 election cycle, he does indicate Biden is the favorite for now.
He has called every election since the Reagan era except 2000 when George Bush defeated Al Gore. His correct predictions include Trump’s 2016 upset and President Biden’s victory over him four years later.
To prognosticate these presidential battles, Lichtman relies on his so-called “Keys to the White House,” — 13 parameters to appraise each candidate’s standing. He developed the algorithm in the 1980s with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok by studying presidential contests going back to the 1860s.
But this cycle is shaping up to be unique given Trump’s unprecedented status and how it’s set to be the first presidential rematch since 1956.
Moreover, third-party contenders appear poised to take the largest bite out of the duopoly since the early 1990s.
“Things are very fluid abroad and in America and a lot can change. What I have said is a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose this election. It could happen, but right now a lot would have to go wrong,” he said.
Biden is currently down in most battleground state poll aggregates and also trails Trump in a five-way race nationally, 39.7% to 42.6%, per the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.
Lichtman’s 13 “keys” include incumbency, party mandate, contest, third party, long-term economy, short-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, incumbent charisma, challenger charisma, and foreign/military success.
So far, he believes Biden isn’t getting the charisma or mandate keys, but posited the 81-year-old clinched the incumbency and party mandate keys.
“This nonsense about Biden stepping down points to the dangers of off-the-top-of-the-head punditry and commentary that is not based on any scientific understanding of how elections work,” Lichtman contended.
Another significant factor looming large is foreign policy strife over the Israel-Hamas war which has reverberated back home, splintering the progressive base.
Biden has faced hundreds of thousands of protest votes in the Democratic primary from individuals who have marked themselves as some variation of “uncommitted” in anger over his support of Israel.
His administration has scrambled to help broker a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, so it is unclear where the war will stand in the weeks leading up to the election.
Trump and Biden are set to square off later this month in Atlanta on June 27 for their first debate of the season hosted by CNN.
