Q&A of the Day – The ’Key’ to Allan Lichtman's Prediction of a Kamala Harris Win
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Today’s Entry: Several people have approached me about American University professor Allan Lichtman’s prediction of a Kamala Harris win in this year’s presidential election.
Bottom Line: As we’re on the precipice of what appears likely to be the first and final presidential debate on Tuesday, one of the most widely cited election prognosticators has decided it effectively doesn’t matter, because after all, it isn’t one of his 13 Keys to determining who he believes the next president of the United States will be. Following Lichtman’s calling of the race for Harris last week – the story spread like wildfire. That’s for two reasons. The first is that, in fact, Lichtman has been as accurate in predicting presidential election outcomes as any figure over the past 40 years, and the predication of a Harris win is precisely what the mainstream news media, over 90% of whom are Democrats, wanted to hear.
Lichtman has correctly predicted 9 of the prior 10 presidential elections – including Donald Trump’s 2016 win. The one he missed was the closest of the bunch. George W. Bush’s win over Al Gore in 2000. So, is the election a fait accompli as Lichtman and the news media might have you think? As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts, let’s evaluate the facts starting with Lichtman’s methodology.
Allan Lichtman’s methodology is based on his premise that there are 13 keys in determining which candidate will win the presidency. Whichever candidate holds the most keys wins. The way this works is that the keys are true/false answers. If the answers are true, the candidate of the incumbent president wins. If they’re false, the challenger wins.
Here are those keys along with whom he thinks holds them:
- Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections. FALSE (Trump)
- Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination. TRUE (Harris)
- Incumbency: The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president. FALSE (Trump)
- Third party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign. TRUE (Harris)
- Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. TRUE (Harris)
- Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. TRUE (Harris)
- Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. TRUE (Harris)
- Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. TRUE (Harris)
- Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. TRUE (Harris)
- Incumbent charisma: The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. FALSE (Trump)
- Challenger charisma: The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. TRUE (Harris)
- Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (Not determined)
- Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (Not determined)
So even with two of Lichtman’s keys being undecided, he has Harris with eight keys and thus the presidency without the other two. Now there’s something that might have stood out to you. The room for subjectivity within his keys. His methodology is interesting, and again has been highly predictive of outcomes, but not all of the answers this cycle are as cut and dried as they’ve been in the past. In fact, almost every one of Harris’ keys are questionable. For example, it’s true that Harris didn’t have serious competition for the nomination. But it wasn’t because she won with voters. In two presidential bids for president, she’s not even won a state. We’re in unprecedented territory with how Harris become the Democrat nominee. Lichtman should throw that key out this cycle. It doesn’t apply. Regarding the key the lack of a serious third-party challenger. Similarly, Lichtman hands that to Harris. However, there’s only one not-so-insignificant issue with his premise. There was a significant third-party challenger until recently in the form of a lifelong Democrat from the most famous Democrat family in American history. He endorsed Donald Trump and is campaigning for him. How, in any objective analysis, is that a win for Harris? Then there’s the economy.
Have we been in, by definition, a recession? No (although it's possible that we’re at the onset of one currently). Does the average American think we are? Yes. 56% of Americans think the US economy is in a recession. Lichtman’s awarding of a key to Harris on this question is technically correct, while it ignores the reality of the average American’s perception. If perception is reality, it’s the perception of voters and not Lichtman who will decide this thing, he’s dead wrong. Harris is awarded both keys related to the economy due to the performance of the Biden-Harris administration. Only 39% of voters approve of the economy under this administration. It’s hard to emphasize the extent of the absurdity of Harris winning both economic keys over Trump. The perception with voters is the exact opposite and it’s not even close.
So, in other words, you could take Lichtman’s keys and come up with a different result than he did. It’s notable that the one time Lichtman has been wrong it was in favor of a Democrat beating out a Republican. That potentially hints at implicit biases coming through where there’s subjectivity in the answers to his keys. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. Those are the facts.