Allan Lichtman, a professor of political science, has a proven track record when it comes to making predictions about the US presidential elections. Despite the polls indicating that Donald Trump will win the election, he still thinks that the country will not elect a new “red” president.
Although he acknowledges that the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will be a tough one, he believes that the Democrats will still be able to retain the White House. This is despite the departure of Joe Biden from the presidential race.
Despite the change on the Democratic ticket, Lichtman still thinks that Trump will not be able to win a second term. He noted that his prediction method, which is based on 13 keys to the White House, currently indicates that the Democrats will win the election.
In 1981, Lichtman and Vladimir Kellis-Brook, a geophysicist from Russia, developed the 13 Keys to the White House, which is a prediction system that uses various mathematical techniques. The goal of the system is to predict the country’s political and economic situation in the four years before the election.
The 13 keys to the White House are used to predict the outcome of the election based on various factors. If eight out of the 13 items are true, the candidate from the dominant party is expected to win. On the other hand, if six out of the 13 items are false, the challenger is expected to win.
According to American University history professor Allan Lichtman, if the 13 keys are accurate, then the election will be won by Kamala Harris. He noted that if six or more of the keys are false, then the candidate from the opposing party would lose.
With eight keys to the White House, Harris leads Donald Trump by a wide margin, with the remaining five going to the Republicans. As Lichtman states, the recent events surrounding the campaign, including the assassination attempt on Trump, have no bearing on the prediction.
The 13 keys are based on the fundamental structure of the presidential elections, which determines which party will perform well in the White House. Since he first predicted the results of the election in 1984, Lichtman has maintained a strong track record. In 1984, Ronald Reagan was able to win another term despite facing a challenge from Walter Mondale.
It was in 2000 that the accuracy of his prediction method was questioned. Although Lichtman had initially predicted that Al Gore would win the election, George W Bush was eventually installed as the president. Despite the controversy, he still believes that Gore won the election. The professor noted that the investigations into the Florida’s election irregularities, which were triggered by the hanging chads, showed that Gore was the winner.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that gave Bush the presidency, various studies were carried out on the Florida vote. Although some of the studies showed that Bush would have won the state, others noted that the ballots that were rejected should have been counted. These findings could have given Gore the presidency as predicted by Lichtman.
Despite Lichtman’s claims that he was right when he predicted the election results for Donald Trump in 2016, he released a book that explicitly stated that the presidential election was won by Hillary Clinton.
