The American University historian who has correctly predicted the outcomes of nine of the last ten presidential elections tells Fox News Digital that the Democrats ‘finally got smart’ by rallying around Kamala Harris as their candidate – and that is one of the reasons why he thinks she will be November’s winner.
The formula Allan Lichtman has used to correctly predict nearly every presidential race since 1984, his ‘Keys to the White House,’ was developed in 1981 with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok and is based on their analysis of presidential elections dating back to 1860. The ‘keys’ consist of 13 true or false questions, parameters that, if true, favor stability.
‘The way it works is real simple. If six or more keys — any six — go against the White House party, they are predicted losers. Otherwise, they’re predicted winners,’ Lichtman told Fox News Digital this week. ‘And by the way, this also led to a prediction of Donald Trump’s win, which made me virtually alone in making that prediction in 2016.’
Lichtman says the Democrats represented by Harris could lose five keys ‘at most’ and that is why he is predicting that ‘we are going to have a precedent-breaking election and Kamala Harris will become the first woman President of the United States.’
‘We’ve had an unprecedented situation of a sitting president dropping out on the eve of the convention, and it has affected my keys,’ Lichtman continued. ‘Now, with Biden dropping out, the Democrats lost one key — the incumbency key. I thought perhaps the way things were looking, if Biden dropped out, the [Democrats] would have a big party brawl and that would cost them a second key, which could lose them the election. But the Democrats finally got smart and united behind Harris and that preserved the contest key. That means the shift only cost them one key.’
Lichtman describes the contest key as having ‘no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.’ The other keys are as follows: party mandate, 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.
‘I think having Harris front and center rather than Joe Biden, the policymaker, has dampened enthusiasm for protests which helped salvage a second key, the social unrest key,’ Lichtman also said. ‘The keys show that Kamala Harris is a predicted winner.’
Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.