Historian Allan Lichtman, nicknamed the “Nostradamus” of US elections because of his impressive track record in predicting results, has hit back critical surrounding two of his previous predictions.
In a video posted Wednesday to his YouTube channel, Lichtman said, “I want to talk about two criticisms that have emerged in recent years about the 2000 and 2016 elections,” saying his system “correctly predicted the outcome of those elections based on voter intent. Using his “Keys to the White House” model, Lichtman called the 2000 election for then-vice president Al Goreand the 2016 election for the then-businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump.
Although Lichtman called the election for Gore, it was won by George W. Bush. Lichtman said this was not due to a flaw in his model, but to events in Florida: Bush won the state by about 500 votes after victory. Supreme Court interrupted the recount, securing enough Electoral College votes to surpass the 270 needed to win. Gore, however, won the popular vote.
“The wrong person was elected president and it was essentially a stolen election,” Lichtman said.

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The forecasting guru said his claims were supported by a 2001 report submitted to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
“What the report showed was that, overwhelmingly and disproportionately, Florida rejected votes cast by 95 percent of African American voters compared to majority white voters,” he said.
“What they started were so-called excessive votes,” the professor continued. “That’s because African-Americans didn’t have confidence in the system. After all, the governor (Jeb Bush) was the brother of the Republican candidate. So on these crazy punch cards, which were unreliable, they typed Gore, and then they wrote Gore just to be absolutely sure that no one could mistake their intentions.
“Florida rejected all of these votes, despite voters’ clear intentions.”
Lichtman said that based on these intentions, Al Gore should have won Florida and the presidency.
“I maintain that there are very good reasons to believe that I did not miss this election and that I called it correctly,” the historian said.
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of State did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The state’s secretary of state oversees elections.
Lichtman then turned to his 2016 prediction that Trump would beat the former secretary of state. Hillary Clinton.
He said criticism that he only predicted Trump would win the popular vote, not the electoral college (Trump won the electoral college but not the popular vote) was “based on a single out-of-context sentence taken from a Social education article that was finished before he made his final prediction.
“Those who cite this quote are not putting it in context and failing to mention what I have continued to say in this article, which is that while electoral votes are not counted state by state, the simple integral parameters that define ‘White’s Keys’ House’ continues to predict the winners and losers of the election, and that I was confident I could predict that Donald Trump would be elected in 2016.

Allan Lichtman/Newsweek
In an email to News week On Thursday, Lichtman said he has been criticized for more than 40 years.
“I fully accept this as part of predictions that will anger supporters and go against conventional wisdom.
“However, I have never experienced the level of hatred that has been directed at me this year, with attacks being exceptionally vulgar, violent and threatening.
“I have also experienced this year an extraordinary deluge of pseudo-intellectual criticism from those who claim to know how to turn keys better than me or who falsely reconstruct what I have said in past predictions,” he said. he declared.
Lichtman’s system is based on 13 keys, which assess the position of the ruling party based on various factors, including the economy, foreign policy and domestic politics, including social unrest, major scandals, and the presence of a major third-party candidate.
If six or more of the 13 keys (all true/false statements) are false, the ruling party risks losing the election. If five or fewer are wrong, he is expected to win.
The 13 keys, as outlined by the historian in a 2012 article for the Social education newspaper, are they:
- Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the United States House of Representatives than after previous midterm elections.
- No primary competition: There is no serious competition for the nomination of the outgoing party.
- Incumbent seeking re-election: The party’s incumbent candidate is the sitting president.
- No third parties: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
- A strong economy in the short term: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
- A strong economy in the long term: Real per capita economic growth during the term is equal to or greater than the average growth during the previous two terms.
- Major policy change: The current administration is making major changes to national policy.
- No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
- No scandal: The current administration is not marred by any major scandal.
- No foreign or military failure: The current administration does not experience any major failures in foreign or military affairs.
- Major success abroad or military: The current administration achieves major success in foreign or military affairs.
- Charismatic incumbent: The party’s incumbent candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
- Uncharismatic challenger: The contesting party candidate is neither charismatic nor a national hero.
Lichtman formally founded this vice president Kamala Harris will win the 2024 presidential election, based on this forecast model.
News week previously analyzed the reliability of the model in speaking with political scientists and critics who said he was “prone to bias and subjectivity.”
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