Allan Lichtman, a professor with American University, spent the whole year — 2024 — telling anyone who might lend him their ear all about his “13 keys” to this election cycle. What made him think anyone should give him the time of day? Well he claimed that these keys were correct for the last 4 decades. You’re probably wondering what keys I’m talking about. The Western Journal has the answer:
Those keys include: party mandate, contest, incumbency, third party, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, foreign/military failure, foreign/military success, incumbent charisma, and challenger charisma. Of course, he was the guy who thought that the “keys” were so key to the presidential race that he beseeched the Democrats to leave President Joe Biden in the race after the June debate, despite the fact he was obviously mentally infirm. In Lichtman’s view, this was giving away the incumbency key and the contest key. Even after the Democrats switched out the candidate, however, the man The New York Times said had been “dubbed the Nostradamus of presidential election predictions for his near-perfect 40-year track record” thought Harris had more keys than Trump.
Lichtman is no slouch when it comes to predicting presidential races. He’s nailed at least 9 out of the last 10 presidential races. He was wrong in 2000. He also was wrong about Trump winning the popular vote back in 2016.
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1831725820613947535?
As you’ve probably heard by now, Lichtman got it wrong this time around too. And what makes this particular failure sting a bit more than it probably should is that he was doing a livestream during the election. Ouch.
“During an online stream on Tuesday night, Lichtman and his son, Sam Lichtman, provided live updates as early counts showed gains for Donald Trump, admitting several times that initial numbers for the vice president were not ideal,” the U.K. Independent pointed out.
“However, as more results came in Lichtman admitted that the data was ‘very scary’ later admitting ‘it doesn’t look good’ as they took a deeper look at the race for North Carolina.
Data came in demonstrating that Trump won a whopping 51 percent of the Hispanic vote in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania. His reaction is priceless. If you have fought and fought and stood boldly for your conservative principles and backed Trump no matter what it cost you, this should put a smile on your face.
“What? That’s not possible,” he commented on the news. “The world has turned upside down, that’s all I can say.” Then, just a few moments later, he took a look at the Senate races and then said, “nothing positive for Harris yet.”
And then the meltdown came.
“I’ve been hopeful this entire time,” his son went on to say during the livestream. “I know. You’ve been more hopeful than me,” Lichtman replied.
“The democracy’s gone,” Lichtman said as he abruptly ended the livestream.
Well, I mean, we’re not a democracy so, yeah, it’s gone. It never existed in the first place. Constitutional Republic. Learn those words, Lichtman. Learn them well.