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On a special episode (first released on October 3, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Who will win this razor-tight presidential election in November? Well, it depends on who you ask. Historian Allan Lichtman has accurately predicted the outcome of 9 out of the last 10 presidential elections, and he’s done it without the use of polling data. Instead, he uses a set of 13 keys to make his predictions. And, yes, he is almost always right. Who does he predict will win in November? Allan Lichtman, historian and professor at American University, joins us on The Excerpt to discuss his prediction and why his pick almost always emerges the winner.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, October 3rd, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

Who will win this razor-tight presidential election in November? Well, it depends on who you ask. Historian Allan Lichtman has accurately predicted the outcome of 9 out of the last 10 presidential elections, and he's done it without the use of polling data. Instead, he uses a set of 13 keys to make his predictions. And yes, he is almost always right. Who does he predict will win in November?

Here to discuss is Allan Lichtman, historian and professor at American University. Thanks for joining me, Allan.

Allan Lichtman:

My pleasure.

Dana Taylor:

So let's start with the million-dollar question. Who do you think will win in November?

Allan Lichtman:

It's not who I think. It's who my system, the 13 keys to the White House predicts, and according to the keys to the White House, we are going to have a new and pathbreaking American president, Kamala Harris will become the first woman President of the United States, at least cracking, if not shattering the glass ceiling, and she'll become the first American president of mixed African and East Asian descent, foreshadowing where our country is going. We are rapidly becoming a majority-minority country. Old white guys like me are on the decline.

Dana Taylor:

You've said you have 13 keys that you use to predict a race. What are they?

Allan Lichtman:

The keys tap into how American presidential elections really work as votes up or down on the strength and performance of the White House party. They look at things like midterm elections, incumbency, contests for the incumbent party nomination, third parties, short and long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, foreign/military failures and successes. And only two keys have anything to do with the candidates. And they're very high threshold keys assessing whether the candidates are one of those once-in-a-generational, across the board, transformational candidates like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. And the way the system works, five or fewer keys, the White House party has predicted winners, six or more negative keys, they're predicted losers.

Dana Taylor:

You predicted Donald Trump's win over Hillary Clinton in 2016. This time around your predicting Trump will lose to Kamala Harris. Which key or keys that he got the first time around is he not winning this time?

Allan Lichtman:

Remember, the theory is elections are primarily referenda on the strength and performance of the White House party. And when I predicted Donald Trump's win in 2016, I said given that there are six or more negative keys against the White House party, any generic Republican would have won in 2016. And of course, Barack Obama had won in 2012, but when you got to 2016, you had an open seat, no incumbent. You had a huge internal party battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. You didn't have a big follow-up to the Affordable Care Act or the dispatch of Bin Laden, so the situation had fundamentally changed in 2016.

Then we get to this year, and of course, now we have a new set of keys against the incumbent Democrats. And this time they avoided a big contest because they got smart and united behind Harris. There was major policy change between the Trump and the Biden administration in areas like the environment, immigration, infrastructure, climate change, and I assessed that the Biden administration achieved a major success in Ukraine.

It was Biden and Biden alone who put together the coalition of the West that stopped Putin from conquering Ukraine and threatening America's national security by going after our NATO allies. And in the face of lukewarm Republican support, it was Biden whose support has helped keep Ukraine alive for over two and a half years and make an incursion into Russia. I deem this will go down as an historic presidential achievement.

So situations change year to year, and the keys gauge those changing situations.

Dana Taylor:

The keys include everything from a candidate's charisma to foreign military successes and failures. As you've said, how did Biden's late decision to not seek another term affect your prediction that Harris will win in November?

Allan Lichtman:

The keys fully took into account this historically unprecedented withdrawal of the sitting president on the eve of the party convention and the turn to a new nominee. First of all, the Biden withdrawal cost the incumbent Democrats one key, the incumbency key. But by uniting behind Harris, they saved the contest key. No incumbent party has even reelected since 1900 when they lost both those keys, so one key down.

And I also assess that the switch to Harris might have saved the Democrats two other keys. First, the third party key because voters no longer had to choose between two old white guys. Hate to say that being an old white guy myself, but it's true. That might've salvaged the third party key with the fizzling of the RFK Jr. campaign and then his suspending his campaign.

Then there's the social unrest key. Protests were directed against Biden as the decision maker, but he's now in the background. Harris is front and center, and that's dampened social unrest. So the switch cost the party one key, but may have salvaged two other keys.

Dana Taylor:

Which keys are most important, would you say, to the Harris campaign? Do any carry more weight than others?

Allan Lichtman:

All the keys are equally weighted, and that's one of the secrets to the success of the keys over 40 years, ever since I predicted Ronald Reagan's reelection in April 1982, nearly three years ahead of time during what was then the worst recession since the Great Depression when 60% of Americans said he was too old to run again.

So the secret is I don't weight the keys, they all count equally. The problem with weighting is you've got to weight keys or any indicators based on past elections, and those weights will change unpredictably in the next election that you don't know and will create errors.

Dana Taylor:

Which keys does the Trump campaign have a lock on?

Allan Lichtman:

Here are the keys that count against the White House party and obviously favor Trump. The mandate key because Democrats lost US House seats in 2022. Incumbency, it's an open seat. And incumbent charisma, because Harris, whatever you may think of her, is certainly not yet a Franklin Roosevelt. And the Democrats also lose the foreign policy/military policy failure key for Gaza, which is a humanitarian disaster with no end in sight. The US does not have boots on the ground there, but we are deeply invested in the Middle East. That's four keys definitively lost, two keys short of what would be necessary to predict Harris's defeat and Donald Trump returning to the White House.

The shakiest key is the foreign policy success key, which I described to you previously. But even if things would go horribly wrong in Ukraine, and I certainly don't expect that, that would still be only five keys down, the system would still predict under any circumstances a Harris victory. There aren't enough negative keys to go against the prediction of a Harris win and a Trump loss.

Dana Taylor:

Does your model account for the increasing polarization in American politics and its impact on elections? Does it factor in at all when predicting who will win the presidency?

Allan Lichtman:

It absolutely accounts for polarization. The model is incredibly robust. It goes all the way back to 1860 in development, the horse and buggy days of politics, the Civil War era when things were obviously even more polarized than today. It goes back to a time when we had no radio, no television, no automobiles, no planes, no polls. We were an agricultural society, women didn't vote, African Americans were enslaved. So the model takes into account vastly greater changes in our politics, our society, our economy, and our demography than anything that's occurred recently.

In 2008, critics said to me, "You got to change your model. We have an African American running. Never had that before. America's not ready for an African American." I said, "No, my model's robust. I don't change it." And of course, I was right in predicting Obama.

In 2016 after I predicted Trump, the Access Hollywood tape came out and people said, "You've got to change your model. We've never had a presidential candidate on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women." And I said, "No, I don't change my model because it's so robust."

So if I tried to fiddle with my model in response to what people say are contemporary changes, I would just make errors. The keys are indeed the northern star of prediction. They don't change. Now, I'm not so arrogant to say the pattern of 160 years of history can never change. But the point is if such a change occurred, you would never know it in advance. You could only gauge it after the fact. That's why you don't fiddle with your model in advance.

Dana Taylor:

Kamala Harris electrified the Democratic Convention. Despite his losses in 2020, Donald Trump has maintained his hold on the Republican base. When it comes to determining an objective key like a candidate's charisma, how are you able to assess it and choose a winner?

Allan Lichtman:

Yeah, I am frequently criticized by saying, "How can you say Trump is not charismatic?" But you have to understand, I have a very specific definition of the key, and I've turned this key ever since 1860. My definition is you have to be an across-the-board, broadly appealing candidate. You cannot appeal to just a narrow base.

Since 1900, there have only been half a dozen such candidates that fulfilled that criteria, and we pretty much know who they are. They're not William Howard Taft and Gerald Ford. They're Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower. Of course, he was a war hero. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama in 2008. That's it.

Whatever you may think of Trump, he doesn't fit the criteria because he appeals to a narrow base. In four years as president, his approval rating was 41%, right at the bottom, his narrow base. In two elections, he lost the vote of the people by a combined 10 million votes. FDR and Reagan won six elections by landslide. So he clearly doesn't qualify.

So if you look at my definition, and you'll look at how I've turned the keys, and you look at things like approval ratings, election results, commentary on the candidates, there's no mystery about who does and does not fulfill the criteria.

Dana Taylor:

The margins of our own USA Today polling show a race that's too close to call. Do you think that this will be a tight race and could an October surprise upend your prediction?

Allan Lichtman:

The biggest myth in American political analysis in history is the October surprise. There has never been an October surprise that's changed my prediction. I've always made my predictions before then and never changed them. And if I had responded to so-called October surprises like the Access Hollywood tape, I would have made errors.

And the big lesson here is keep your eye on the big picture of governance as gauged by the keys to the White House. Keys have a message. Governing, not campaigning is what counts in presidential elections. That's why the so-called October surprises have never made a difference. Does that mean nothing could ever happen that could change the model? Of course, but in 40 years it hasn't happened.

Dana Taylor:

I mentioned that you correctly predicted nine of the last 10 presidential election outcomes, save one, in 2000 when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore, and that was a squeaker. Did you question your formula or any of the 13 keys following that election? What happened there?

Allan Lichtman:

I picked Gore, and I was right because as I proved in my report to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, still on their website, the wrong candidate won Florida and the wrong candidate was elected president. As I proved overwhelmingly, Florida rejected ballots actually cast by overwhelmingly Democratic Black voters as compared to ballots cast by heavily white Republican voters.

Dana Taylor:

Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt, Allan.

Allan Lichtman:

My great pleasure. Take care.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.