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From /apa, September 9, 2024, 11:42 a.m.
Image: PEDRO UGARTE (APA/AFP/PEDRO UGARTE)
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Allan Lichtman
Image: PEDRO UGARTE (APA/AFP/PEDRO UGARTE)
BETHESDA. US historian Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the winners of almost all presidential elections over the past 40 years.
The US presidential election is shaping up to be a close race between former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Polls and data on the electorate are currently receiving a lot of attention, especially in the swing states. However, there is another source for election forecasts: US historian Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the winners of almost all presidential elections over the past 40 years.
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});And the 77-year-old is convinced, after applying his sophisticated analysis method, that Harris will win the election on November 5, as he told the AFP news agency. The historian comes to this conclusion thanks to his “13 key factors” method, which completely ignores the results of opinion polls.
To make his prediction, Lichtman goes through a series of “true or false” statements. If six or more of these statements are against the candidate of the party that currently has the president, Lichtman believes the election will go to his challenger – this year that would be the Republican Trump.
Only three key factors speak for Trump
One of the statements to be checked is whether the president’s party gained seats in the most recent midterm election. However, the Democrats lost their majority in the US House of Representatives in 2022, so the balance is tipping in Trump’s favor on this issue. Other factors also speak in Trump’s favor. For example, the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden is not running again, contrary to his original plans, so Harris, who will be his successor, does not have the important incumbency bonus.
According to Lichtman, another argument against Harris is that, although she exudes confidence, according to his analysis she cannot score points with the key factor of being a once-in-a-generation candidate with such charisma. According to Lichtman, former presidents Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt had this advantage.
While, according to Lichtman, only these three key factors speak for Trump, the Democrat Harris can score points much more often. For example, Lichtman checked off the “major policy change” point because of the Biden administration’s huge funding packages for climate protection and infrastructure. In addition, according to the analysis, Harris meets the requirement that she is not involved in any major scandal.
Critics say Lichtman’s criteria are subjective. But the historian, who is also known as the “Sage of Bethesda” because of his residence in the US state of Maryland near the capital Washington, is undeterred. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years now,” he said in an interview with AFP. “I think I’ve heard every conceivable question about it.”
“They are not subjective, they are judgmental”
In response to the objection that the key factors he identified are subjective, he replies: “They are not subjective, they are judgmental.” Historians like him “make judgments all the time,” but are limited by facts.
Amid the “noise” of political propaganda, Lichtman argues that presidential elections are simply a “vote on the strength and performance of the party in the White House.”
In a way, his method is the opposite of the “horse race” reporting that is widespread in the USA, which focuses on the supposed competitive nature of politics, as in horse racing. Because in reality, as he puts it, “we forget practically everything a candidate has to say”.
The only presidential election in which Lichtman’s calculations did not work out since 1984 was the victory of George W. Bush in 2000. However, the historian can at least defend his assessment by pointing out that the Republican’s victory was a legally highly complex nail-biter in which the Supreme Court ultimately had to intervene – and that the Democrat Al Gore won more votes nationwide at the time.
ePaper
