2024-09-07 17:44:19
Professor Allan Lichtman from American University has been able to correctly predict the winner of the presidential election in the United States since 1984. In predictions, he relies on a method he developed himself. On Thursday, he announced the final forecast for this year’s race for the White House for the newspaper Aktuálně.cz.
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With two months to go until the presidential election, Lichtman believes Democratic candidate Kamala Harris will win it. “I am convinced that she will defeat Donald Trump and become the 47th president of the United States,” he confirmed exclusively for Aktuálně.cz. At the same time, this year’s election is specific, because Harris only replaced current President Joe Biden, who withdrew from the race for the White House, on the Democratic nomination in July.
But the American professor also favored him over Trump. He gave the first interview to the editors already in June, in which he stated that a lot would have to go wrong for the Democrats to lose the November elections.
In another interview at the end of July, he said that he believed that Harris would win the election, and that he would publish a final prediction at the end of August. He announced it for the first time on Thursday in a video for the prestigious American newspaper The New York Times. “But the real outcome is up to you, the American people,” he urged voters.
In the early 1980s, Lichtman developed a system called the 13 Keys to the White House. The method works on the principle of simple questions examining the political environment before the elections, to which the individual answers either yes or no. As the historian and sociologist explained, if six or more keys are false, the White House switches sides. If fewer than six are false, stability and the incumbent win.
According to Lichtman, Trump has so far scored only three key points in his prediction system, while Harris has eight. Two keys regarding foreign policy are still undecided. However, even if Trump eventually won them over to his side, it would not guarantee him a trip to the White House. He would need at least six keys for that.
In the July forecast, apart from foreign policy, the sociologist kept a question mark on two other keys. First, that there will be no serious contest for the nomination of the governing party in the primaries, which has not happened, and second, that no major third-party representative or independent candidate will seek the White House. He mentioned the name of Robert Kennedy, the nephew of ex-president John F. Kennedy. However, he stopped the campaign last month and supported Trump.
The respected professor gained much media attention most recently after successfully predicting the 2016 election in which he predicted a victory for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. At the time, his prediction went against most polls and expert opinion. Trump then texted him shortly after his victory: “Professor, congratulations, good guess.”
13 keys to the White House
1. After the midterm elections, the governing party has more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. There is no serious fight for the nomination of the ruling party in the primaries.
3. The candidate of the ruling party is the incumbent president.
4. No major third-party representative or independent candidate is seeking the White House.
5. The economy is not in recession at the time of the election campaign.
6. Real economic growth per capita during the election period is the same or higher than during the previous two election periods.
7. The current government is making significant changes in national politics.
8. There is no long-term social unrest during the term of office.
9. The ruling administration is not marred by any major scandal.
10. The ruling administration has not failed significantly in foreign or military affairs.
11. The ruling administration has achieved significant success in foreign or military affairs.
12. The candidate of the ruling party is charismatic or a national hero.
13. The opponent of the ruling administration’s candidate is neither charismatic nor a national hero.
This year, the polls predict a close fight. For example, an August pre-election survey by The Wall Street Journal showed that Biden’s vice president has a lead of one percentage point over her rival and would win in a straight fight 48 to 47 percent. The pre-election survey took place after the Democratic convention confirmed Harris as the official candidate. This is the first survey of this newspaper in which a female candidate leads.
The results of the survey confirm the trend of recent weeks, when the American vice president managed to equalize the lead that Trump had over Biden when the president was still running for re-election.
For the elections, the key results will be in seven so-called swing states, i.e. fluctuating states in which the chances of Democrats and Republicans have been balanced for a long time. Here, too, a series of polls points to a close result.
Since 1973, he has been teaching at the American University in Washington. In 1981, he created a famous model for predicting presidential elections called Keys to the White House. He collaborated with the Russian mathematician and seismologist Vladimir Keilis-Borok on its development. Thanks to this, he managed to correctly predict how almost all presidential elections would turn out.
In an extremely close vote in 2000, he correctly guessed that Democratic candidate Al Gore would win the most electoral votes. After their recalculation and the intervention of the US Supreme Court, the Republican George Bush Jr. finally won the majority in the electoral college, and thus became the president of the USA.
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