The main predictor of the US election results explained his mistake

Forecasting the results of the US presidential election was built on the hypothesis that a "rational, pragmatic electorate" evaluates the work of the current administration and, based on this, determines its favorite. This is how American history professor Allan Lichtman explained to The Guardian his mistake in determining the winner of the vote held on November 5, 2024.

Lichtman explained his failure with a large amount of misinformation that spread "to all aspects of our society and economy": inflation, unemployment, stock market, GDP growth, assistance to victims of cataclysms, illegal migrants and their crime, the conflict of Russia and Ukraine.

"Many people live in an alternate universe, and this calls into question the fundamental basis of political decision—making in this country," the professor said.

The professor has developed his own system for determining the future winner of the US presidential election called "13 keys". He correctly predicted the result of nine of the last ten votes. Since 1984, he has made a mistake only once, when in 2000 it was not Democrat Albert Gore who won, but George W. Bush, and formally Lichtman still made the right prediction: Gore scored more (by 543 thousand) votes than Bush Jr., but fewer electoral votes.

In 2016, he guessed the victory of Donald Trump and just a few days after the vote predicted that the politician would be impeached: "It's just my intuition. They don't want Trump as president because they can't control him. He's unpredictable."

In 2024, he predicted that Democrat Kamala Harris would win, not Republican Donald Trump.

"We have seen how Trump, more often than ever in the history of this country, directed the darkest impulses of American life - something that has always been with us, but this time has intensified exponentially.: racism, misogyny, xenophobia, anti—Semitism," Lichtman continued.

He emphasized the emergence of "something new in our politics that influenced the forecast and may affect future forecasts" and recalled George Orwell's novel 1984, in which he indicated that dictatorships rely not only on violence, but also through information control: "Hunger is abundance, war — this is the world. We are in an era of doublethink, and maybe we can get out of it, and maybe not."

The professor's system is based on the account of the "13 keys" that the professor chose as the main factors of victory, among them the state of the economy, the charisma of candidates, social unrest, foreign policy or military failures, major scandals, the participation of the incumbent president in the elections.

Lichtman said that after the publication of his forecast for 2024, he began to receive death threats and vulgar messages, and some even tried to break into his house. Unknown people called the police and asked to check his house, and personal information was published on the Internet.

"It tells me that America has sunk to a completely new bottom," he shared.

The professor admitted that Trump's cooperation with billionaire Elon Musk "broke the predictive model," but the system will be adjusted for the next election.

After the 2016 election, which Trump won, the Republican sent Lichtman a message: "Congratulations, Professor. A good choice."

Lichtman is included in the list of the 100 most influential geopolitical experts in the world according to Rise Global, he took the 85th line. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1973 with a degree in Modern American History and Quantitative Methods, at the same time he became an associate professor of the Department of History at American University, in 1980 — professor, and in 2011 — distinguished professor, reminds RBC.