The Morning: Allan Lichtman makes his pick!

American University professor Allan Lichtman has successfully predicted the winner in 9 out of the last 10 presidential election. (The only one he missed was 2000.)

How does he do it? Not with polls! Or candidates!

Instead, Lichtman uses a set of 13 “keys,” which, if the incumbent party turns a majority of them, they win.

The goal of his “keys” system is to take the long view of elections — avoiding the daily who’s up and who’s down and instead focusing on things like the state of the economy, the presence or absence of major scandal in the White House and the presence of a major third-party candidate in the race to determine the winner.

Today, in a video at the New York Times, Lichtman made his long-awaited 2024 pick. Here are Lichtman’s keys, with his judgments on whether they are turned for Kamala Harris (TRUE) or Donald Trump (FALSE):

1. Midterm Gains: FALSE (Democrats lost seats in 2022)

2. Incumbency: FALSE (Joe Biden isn’t running again)

3. Primary contest: TRUE (Harris didn’t face a primary)

4. Third party: TRUE (There’s no significant 3rd party candidate in the race following RFK Jr.’s decision to bow out)

5. Short Term Economy: TRUE (no recession)

6. Long Term Economy: TRUE (long term growth has been at least as good as during the past 2 terms)

7. Policy Change: TRUE (Biden has instituted a number of major policy changes)

8. Social Unrest: TRUE (No major protests around the country)

9. White House Scandal: TRUE (No big scandals directly involving the president)

10. Incumbent Charisma: FALSE (Lichtman says Harris is not a generationally charismatic candidate)

11. Challenger Charisma: TRUE (Lichtman doesn’t see Trump as supernaturally charismatic either

12. Foreign Policy Failure: TBD (Too early to say)

13. Foreign Policy Success: TBD (Too early to say)

Add them up and you get 8 TRUE, 3 FALSE and 2 TBDs.

Which means: Lichtman believes Harris will be elected president — even if foreign policy (in Ukraine/Russia and the the Middle East) becomes perceived as a failure over these next few months.

Should Democrats take it to the bank? I tend to see Lichtman’s “keys” system as one of a number of predictive models that have insight if not certainty into the election.

But he’s been right 90% of the time so….

For more on Lichtman, check my conversation with him out here. And watch this video.

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