East President Trump’s According to Dr. Allan Lichtman, a criminal conviction in a landmark New York trial has thrown the 2024 presidential election into unprecedented turmoil — or it might not.
The American University historian, who has correctly predicted the outcome of nine of the last 10 U.S. presidential elections, told Fox News Digital that immediate analysis of Trump’s sentencing is futile as the country awaits election day. “We won’t know much until the sentencing on July 11, just before the Republican convention,” Lichtman said in an interview.
Allowing himself to speculate, the proven prophet said Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records has not fundamentally split his base, which Trump will need to unite to defeat President Biden in November. But no one knows, not Lichtman nor the pundits he always outperforms, how Americans outside of Trump’s base will react to a convicted felon on the presidential ballot.
“We don’t know what effect this will have on moderate and independent voters. So really, we have to look over time and not rely on immediate, unreliable pundits,” Lichtman said.
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Lichtman does not believe that former President Trump’s conviction has decreased his overall support among his supporters. (Eric Thayer, The Washington Post, via Getty Images)
Lichtman is a historian, not a clairvoyant. The formula he uses to correctly predict almost everything is true. Presidential race Since 1984, his “Keys to the White House” was developed in 1981 together with the mathematician Vladimir Kellis-Borok and is based on their analysis of the presidential elections of 1860. Lichtman says the secret of his success is that he kept his personal preferences away from his forecasts.
“We look at presidential elections not as Carter vs. Reagan, Republican vs. Democrat, liberal vs. conservative, but in geophysical terms,” he explained. “Stability: The White House party stays in power. Earthquake: The White House party is voted out.”
The “key” consists of 13 true or false questions with parameters that, if true, favor incumbency. When eight or more keys are false, the incumbent White House party is forecast to lose. This formula helped Lichtman correctly predict that Trump would win in 2016, when polls, debate performances and political commentators all favored Democrat Hillary Clinton. Earlier, he said President Barack Obama would win re-election when the odds favored Republican Mitt Romney. And he correctly called the 2020 election for Biden.
“The key is the alternative to surveys, which are not predictors. They’re snapshots, they’re misused, they’re not used as predictors. And pundits, you know, who are a lot of fun, but they’re sports talk radio. They have no scientific basis for any of their predictions,” Lichtman argued.
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Lichtman believes he has the secret to predicting who will win any U.S. presidential election, and he has the records dating back to 1984 to prove it. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
The 2024 election is still uncertain, so Lichtman hasn’t made a final projection for this year. But he claims a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose to Trump.
Lichtman’s keys are: party mandate, competition, incumbency, third parties, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, foreign/military failure, foreign/military success, incumbent charisma, and challenger’s charisma.
as things stand, Biden certainly has Lichtman has lost two keys. “He lost what I call the mandate key based on the midterm elections, because the Democrats lost seats in 2022, they needed to win seats to win that key. And he lost the charisma key because he’s no Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy,” Lichtman said.
If six key factors go against Biden, he is likely to lose. The four key factors are whether Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or another third-party candidate wins at least 10% support in national polls; social unrest associated with widespread anti-Israel protests on college campuses; and the success or failure of Biden’s foreign policy efforts amid the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Lichtman says Biden currently has two “keys” — but it appears the rest of the keys are unstable. (Hanna Beyer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Many Democratic strategists and pundits are losing confidence in Biden’s campaign as polls show Trump ahead. Several key swing statesNate Silver, an election data expert and founder of Five Thirty Eight, suggested Monday that the president’s “lowest ever” approval ratings could be enough justification for him to drop out of the election or for the party to nominate someone else at the Democratic convention in August.
Lichtman warns that replacing Biden would be a big mistake for Democrats.
“By Biden contesting the election, he wins my key to power: incumbent president. He wins the party contest: unopposed. Essentially, that means he wins the top two majors,” Lichtman explained.
Without Biden, the Democrats would automatically lose two more keys, meaning only four more keys would have to fall to predict their defeat.
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Without Biden on the Democratic ticket, the party would automatically lose two more keys. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson and Evan Vucci)
“This nonsense about Biden leaving office points to the dangers of off-the-cuff punditry and commentary that isn’t based on any scientific understanding of how elections work,” Lichtman said.
Destructive and depressing punditism is part of what Lichtman calls the “political industrial complex” – an iron triangle of pollsters and political consultants who profit from campaigns, news reporters eager to cover negative soundbites and politicians who are afraid to challenge the other two points of the triangle. Lichtman claims that the horse race theory of elections creates drama and makes money for those involved, but it is not very helpful in informing Americans about the direction of the country.
“The keys provide a way to break the iron triangle,” Lichtman said. “Candidates themselves have to run different kinds of campaigns,” he said. “Run a campaign through the keys, meaning you run a campaign based on your vision. If you’re the incumbent candidate, what have you done and what do you hope to do. If you’re the challenger, what is your clear vision for America?”
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No one remembers conventional campaigns. Lichtman argues that history-making campaigns are those that articulate a vision for the country — think of Barry Goldwater in 1964, who lost by a landslide but defined conservative principles for generations to come. Or George McGovern, whose liberal principles have shaped the Democratic Party since he lost to Richard Nixon in 1972.
,Ronald Reagan in 1980 He laid out very clearly his views on tax cuts, deregulation, military buildup, challenging the Soviet Union. And he won, he won big,” Lichtman said. “And that philosophy influenced politicians in our time, both liberal and conservative.”
Fox News Digital’s Aubrey Spady and Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.
