What did Allan Lichtman predict for the 2024 US Presidential election? Historian's words explored as current poll tells otherwise

Just hours before the results for the 2024 U.S. election were declared, historian Allan Lichtman doubled down on his previous prediction that Kamala Harris would win. On Monday, November 4, 2024, the pundit took to X to call out fellow poll predictor Nate Silver, stating:

"Nate Silver’s compilation of polls is so unreliable that he now says that who will win the presidency is down to luck."

Lichtman was responding to a tweet by Silver where he claimed the final result would boil down to "luck."

Silver explained that he ran about 40,000 simulations that forecasted Harris would win the U.S. election by a narrow margin. He added that he would run 80,000 simulations later. Lichtman, on the other hand, uses his "13 Keys to the White House," which he in a separate post claimed "(would) be right again."

Lichtman's post (Image via X/ @AllanLichtman)

---

Allan Lichtman's "13 Keys to the White House" system to predict election results explained

Using his "13 Keys to the White House" system, Allan Lichtman has rightly forecasted nine out of ten previous elections. In Lichtman's paper published in the January/February 2024 edition of Social Education, he explained that the keys are a series of true or false statements.

Lichtman claimed that if five or fewer points are false, then the incumbent party (or the party currently holding office) would win. The statements include:

1. Key 1 Party Mandate: Following the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did in the previous midterm ballot.
2. Key 2 Contest: The party is facing no serious opposition to its nomination.
3. Key 3 Incumbency: The party's candidate is currently the president.
4. Key 4 Third Party: There is no significant third-party or independent candidate fighting the election.
5. Key 5 Short-term Economy: There was no recession during the party's campaign.
6. Key 6 Long-term Economy: The incumbent party's term saw equal or more growth per-capita economic growth as compared to the mean growth of the past two administrations.
7. Key 7 Policy Change: During its term, the administration brought about major changes in the national policy.
8. Key 8 Social Unrest: The term saw no social unrest.
9. Key 9 Scandal: The incumbent party was not tainted by any major scandal.
10. Key 10 Foreign/ Military Failure: The administration suffered no such failures.
11. Key 11 Foreign/ Military Success: The party achieved success.
12. Key 12 Incumbent Charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Key 13 Challenger Charisma: The challenging candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

Despite predicting Kamala Harris' victory, less than a week ago, Allan Lichtman claimed that he was quite nervous. In a YouTube live stream with his son on October 30, 2024, he explained how recent and fragile democracy was and how easy it was to destroy it. He said:

"For the vast sweep of human history, there has been almost no democracy. Peoples were governed by the divine right of kings, by right of birth, or by the sword and blood. Democracy is a very recent development."

He added that every four years he had "butterflies in (his) stomach," but this year he had a "flock of crows."

---

Despite Lichtman's prediction, Donald Trump won with 277 electoral votes in his favor. He needed 270 to win.