Alan Lichtman, a historian known as the “Nostradamus” of US presidential elections, predicted that Kamala Harris would win the White House in November polls.
Lichtman had previously warned Democrats about the dangers of removing Joe Biden from the running mate but still predicted in a New York Times video that the vice president, who became the party’s nominee after the president withdrew in July, would win.
Harris said she was expected to beat Donald Trump, despite the Democrats effectively giving up a key factor – the sitting president – one of 13 criteria they used to predict the outcome of the presidential election.
“Kamala Harris is going to be the next president of the United States. At least, that’s my prediction for the outcome of this election,” Lichtman, 77, said at the end of an unusual seven-minute video that shows him dressed as a track and field athlete and running against other older athletes in a qualifying race for the 2025 National Senior Olympics.
“But the outcome is up to you, so go vote.”
Lichtman’s predictions are based on a series of true/false propositions and do not take into account polling trends.
He previously spoke strongly against replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee after Biden’s disastrous defeat to the former president in a June debate and dismissed polls that suggested it hurt Biden’s chances of winning the election.
Still, he thought eight of the 13 keys favored Harris. He said some of the factors that helped Harris were the absence of a strong third-party candidate after the end of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent campaign, positive short- and long-term economic indicators, major legislative achievements enacted by the Biden administration and the lack of social unrest or scandals associated with the White House. Also in Harris’ favor was that she did not have to go through a party nomination contest to succeed Biden, because other candidates quickly declared their support for her before last month’s Democratic National Convention.
Even if the two unresolved keys to foreign policy success or failure worked in Trump’s favor, according to this formula, it still wouldn’t be enough to win the election.
Lichtman accurately predicted Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, despite most polls pointing to the opposite outcome, and also correctly predicted that Trump would be impeached while in office — and he has been impeached twice.
The American University history professor claims to have predicted the outcome of US presidential elections since 1984, correctly predicting all but one. The contested victory between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 was decided when the US Supreme Court ruled in Bush’s favour after weeks of legal battles over disputed vote results.
Lichtman argues that even that taint is unfair, alleging that thousands of rejected ballots were inadvertently tainted by voters who were acting in good faith to support Gore, who was then vice president and the Democratic nominee.