Vice President Kamala Harris will defeat former President Donald Trump in November, says the historian who has successfully predicted nine out of 10 presidential elections since 1984.
“Kamala Harris is going to be the next president of the United States, at least that’s my prediction of the outcome of this race,” Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University, told The New York Times in a video interview released Thursday.
Lichtman, whose “Keys to the White House” prediction model consists of 13 true-or-false questions, said in the interview that eight keys favored Harris.
Trump, Lichtman said, had three things going for him: First, Harris is not an incumbent; second, Harris is not, in his view, a “one-of-a-kind, broadly inspiring candidate”; and third, the Democratic Party lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections.
But this figure was exceeded by eight other keys.
In addition to benefiting from positive short- and long-term economic conditions and legislative accomplishments under President Joe Biden’s administration, Harris’ candidacy has not been marred by scandals or lingering social unrest, Lichtman said.
Additionally, Harris didn’t have to go through a primary election to succeed Biden, he added. Lichtman said it helped that she was up against Trump, who “only appeals to a narrow base.”
Harris, he added, also had no third-party challenger since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign last month.
The last two keys — on foreign policy failures and successes — wouldn’t matter as much since Trump would still only have five keys even if they were against Harris, Lichtman said.
Lichtman’s assessment marks a slight change from his last prediction in July, when he told the Wall Street Journal that the Democratic Party would have to stick with Biden if it wanted to keep the White House.
“Biden checks two key boxes on the right. Biden steps aside, they obviously lose the incumbent and it’s not at all clear that there’s not going to be a big party fight,” he said at the time.
Even though Biden eventually dropped out, Harris managed to avoid a primary. In addition to gaining Biden’s support, Harris managed to rally her party around her in a short period of time.
Lichtman’s predictions have not always been accurate. He was wrong in the 2000 election when he predicted a victory for Al Gore instead of his eventual rival, George W. Bush.
It is Lichtman’s only wrong election result since he began making predictions in the 1984 election.
Representatives for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside of normal business hours.
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