Why the ‘Nostradamus’ of U.S. presidential elections got his 2024 call wrong

By Paa-Kwesi Heto

Political analysts and pollsters have rightly begun assessing what went wrong for the Democrats and the Harris Campaign as the dust settles on the 2024 U.S. General Election. Although the post-mortem discussions (and soul-searching in some cases) require all the attention and care, there is a fascinating side conversation that is not getting enough attention.

This conversation focuses on the failures of the polling industry, particularly the inaccurate prediction of Distinguished Professor Allan Lichtman – an individual who has rightfully earned the title the ‘Nostradamus’ of U.S. presidential elections for his near-perfect forecasting of U.S. presidential elections since 1984. Lichtman’s inaccurate prediction of a Harris win has led some editors and analysts to question his model’s reliability and ability to efficiently forecast elections in complex political landscapes.

Most of the commentaries on why Lichtman got it wrong have, so far, pointed the blame fingers in the wrong direction – the 13 Keys to the White House.

In this article, I argue that Lichtman got it wrong because he ignored or misinterpreted the data. His misinterpretation had nothing to do with the keys or misinformation.

He would have forecasted a Donald Trump win if he strictly and objectively applied the Lichtman/Keilis-Borok 13 Keys to the White House. This is precisely what Nate Silver did with the keys and forecasted a Trump win in September 2024. (Let us ignore Silver’s mischievous reasons for using the 13 Keys for the sake of this discussion).

In a September 27, 2024, post on X, Lichtman ridiculed Silver for correctly, albeit nefariously, using his keys to predict a Trump win. His derisive response to Silver showed that Lichtman’s approach to the 2024 elections was not about science.

It was about his ego and role as a gatekeeper. In short, he let his personal preferences cloud his scientific judgment.

Notwithstanding my hypothesis of what went wrong, this article is not about the individual-level factors contributing to Lichtman’s misinterpretation of the facts. It is about spotlighting the powerfulness of the Lichtman/Keilis-Borok 13 Keys to the White House.

Silver got it right using the keys, while Lichtman got it wrong despite using the same tools because the model is not as subjective as critics like Silver want us to believe. It is an apolitical, scientific tool that accurately captures the factors influencing how Americans vote. As a form of demonstration, I will conduct a post-facto analysis of the 2024 presidential election using the 13 keys and explain where Lichtman and I differ, hoping that explains how and why Lichtman was wrong.

The Post-facto Forecast

Party mandate: False. The Democrats had fewer U.S. House of Representatives seats after the 2022 midterm elections.

No primary contest: False. This key is tricky, especially during the 2024 election cycle. Although the Democratic establishment tried to clear the field for the Biden/Harris ticket, it did not eliminate concerns over their electability.

Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson challenged the ticket, and there was an uncommitted campaign in Michigan. Interestingly, the Democrats carried out a palace coup and pushed Biden aside with over 100 days to election day.

After the coup, the establishment’s fatal mistake was coronating Harris as the heir apparent without a primary or truncated selection process. The coronation meant Harris inherited the throne and its baggage. Due to the inheritance, she could not reset the campaign and distance themselves from the unpopular policies of the Biden/Harris administration.

It is worth pointing out that the concerns over Biden’s age and leadership were not only about Biden; some of the concerned parties had issues with the number two and what kind of leadership she would provide in Biden’s absence. The Democratic leadership failed to interpret the situation from that dimension. In a sense, there was a public challenge to the ticket, not just an internal disquiet.

Incumbent seeking re-election: False. Although Harris inherited the baggage of the Biden/Harris administration, she did not inherit the advantages incumbency conferred on candidates.

No third party: True. There was no significant third-party or independent campaign. Trump consolidated the third-party votes, getting people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to drop out and back him.

However, some might question the decision to rate this as true. They will argue that Jill Stein offered a safe choice for disgruntled Democrats in places like Dearborn, Michigan. The problem with that argument is that Harris would not have won had all Jill Stein voters voted for her in places like Michigan.

Strong short-term economy: True. There was no economic recession during the election campaign. Many economic indicators, including inflation and consumer confidence, were moving in the right direction.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index (108.7), the Present Situation Index (138.0), and the Expectations Index (89.1) all told the same story in October 2024 – things were looking up for many American households.

Strong long-term economy: False. Economic concerns were a constant theme throughout the campaign. Americans are worried about falling standards of living and rising costs of living.

Rents are becoming unaffordable in many parts of the country, and many young people feel the American dream is getting out of their reach. The inflation under Biden fed into this growing despair (more on this later).

Major policy change: True. The Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Science and Chip Act, student loan forgiveness, and the repeal of some of Trump’s immigration executive orders are major policy changes.

No social unrest: True. This key is also tricky. While millions of Americans are dissatisfied with the administration’s Middle East policies, heavy-handed crackdowns on protests meant there was no sustained social unrest during the term. Even then, voter dissatisfaction with the administration and how university leaders handled the protest meant young voters, a key voting block for the Democrats, were unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt on any other issue.

No scandal: True. There were no major scandals during the Biden/Harris administration. Republican attempts to use Hunter Biden’s struggle to smear the administration largely failed in many respects. If there was anything close to a major scandal, it was frustration over attempts by some in the Democratic party to convince the public that Biden is mentally and physically fit.

During the campaigns, the only scandal that directly affected Harris was CBS’s over-editing of her 60 Minutes interview to portray her favorably. The reputational damage suffered fed into Trump’s narrative. However, it was not deliberating.

No foreign or military failure: False. The incumbent administration had major failures in foreign and military affairs. Many Americans, especially Democrats, would have forgiven the administration for the debacles of the Afghanistan withdrawal and given them a strong score on foreign and military policy had the Hamas ill-advised raid on Israel not happened.

Biden’s adult-in-the-room image collapsed with how he is handling the Israel-Hamas conflict, reminding millions of his earlier failures in Afghanistan and casting doubts over his ability to provide the right leadership in the Russia-Ukrainian conflict. The U.S.’s unsuccessful attempts to stop Houthi attacks in the Red Sea is another example. Harris inherited and exacerbated this problem by not offering an alternative policy, which fed into Republican narratives that she was unmeritorious.

Major foreign or military success: True. The incumbent administration achieved major success in foreign or military affairs, like unifying U.S. allies against Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

Charismatic incumbent: False. Both Harris and her running mate were uncharismatic. She was often criticized for delivering word-salad responses and sounding incoherent at times. While some of the criticisms were out-of-order and misogynistic, indeed, she was not a captivating orator of the likes of Martin Luther King Jr and Barrack Obama.

Uncharismatic challenger: False. The challenging party candidate is not an attractive speaker to his critics, but he is to his followers. The two failed assassination attempts and the overzealous efforts by Democratic prosecutors to be the first to throw him into jail solidified his cult leader image in the minds of his followers and earned him new voters who identified with his struggle with the U.S. justice system.

Assuming my analysis closely approximates reality, we can safely conclude that seven of the thirteen keys were against Harris. The keys on social unrest and scandal were not at thresholds that could have been debilitating to the Harris campaign, but they were a drag on the campaign. They were part of the inherited baggage that she could not adequately address.

The difference

I would like to discuss briefly the difference between Lichtman pre-election analysis and my post-election analysis since it is arrogant and preposterous to suggest that Lichtman, not the 13 Keys, was wrong even though Lichtman developed the 13 Keys.

My analysis differs from those of Lichtman in three critical ways. Firstly, he assigned the No Contest Key to the Democrats. Although Lichtman initially interpreted the pressure campaign as a contest, he endorsed the view, in a post on X on July 21, 2024, that coronating Harris would salvage the contest key. For reasons already explained, it did not.

Her coronation would not have been problematic had Harris been a charismatic candidate or a national hero. It would have also been fine if the election did not include the general population.

The rank-and-file of the Democratic Party fell in line as expected, but the cult-like submission to the whims of the leadership and Democratic elites was not well-received in other quarters. Put simply, she was a consensus nominee only for the party delegates and leadership.

The media and leaders of the Democratic Party dismissed memes about the undemocratic nature of the coronation. For a party campaigning on safeguarding democracy, the coup and coronation were not good optics. The no-contest key was Lichtman’s first missed clue.

Secondly, the strength of the long-term economy is another difference. This election reaffirmed the point that voters’ perceptions of their long-term economic prospects matter.

Lichtman probably assigned the Strong Long Term Economy key to the Democrats due to the bright spots in Biden’s economic data. However, there is a mismatch between the data and citizen’s perceptions. This mismatch between perception and the data has befuddled the administration since 2021, leading the president to complain on several occasions that he is not getting credit for his excellent stewardship of the economy.

Thirdly, we differ on the Uncharismatic Challenger key. There is a tendency to interpret charisma as a positive spell that leaders cast on everyone or most of the population. But, it is not.

Trump positively and negatively inspires devotion in others, making him charismatic in both directions. A careful analysis of the last three presidential elections shows they were mostly about him.

Opposition to him and what he stands for has been the rallying cry for the Democrats since 2016. He inspires in them a devotion to the constitution, the democratic institutions of this country, and female reproductive rights.

For his Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, he is like a messiah who talks and acts like them and says the things they wish they could say. Others in the Republican Party also find solace and comfort in his vision, even if they find his personality disagreeable.

Indeed, not all the millions of Americans who voted for him in 2016, 2020, and 2024 find him captivating, but they find him appealing enough to stand by him through thick and thin for three consecutive times. This distinction is essential because it helps us explain why he is able to capture the national imagination for this long. It is also important because people’s dislike of him causes them to ignore vital facts.

Accurate election forecasting is rewarding because every election has unique circumstances that make forecasting challenging. The Lichtman/Keilis-Borok 13 Keys to the White House has shown across many elections that it is robust and capable of telling us something meaningful about US presidential elections. In 2024, it proved its robustness in the hands of its prominent critic, Silver, showing it is not a subjective tool.

Paa-Kwesi Heto, Ph.D., is a distinguished political economist and societal change expert affiliated with the University of California, Irvine and the Soka University of America.