If Allan Lichtman is correct, without monitoring the myriads of political polls, his 13 Key model predicted a Kamala Harris victory in the US Presidential election back in September, assuming US eligible voters see the current administration foreign policy in Ukraine as being a success.
Professor of History Allan Lichtman at the American University has correctly predicted US elections based on the performance of the current White House administration based on “true” or “false” answers to specific questions about White House performance in 13 key areas. As such the outcome of today’s election may depend on the Ukrainian situation as a major foreign policy factor.
According to Lichtman, a quantitative historian who mathematically analyzes trends in American history, the answers to his 13 true-or-false statements about the success of whichever party holds the office of president will determine the outcome of the election. The professor disregards polls calling them, to paraphrase, “uncertain snapshots with little to no predictive power,” because polling cannot factor in unlikely voters who have in recent elections skewed results.
History Professor Allan Lichtman, developer of 13 Keys to the White House predictive model. (Screenshot)
Lichtman has correctly predicted US presidential elections since the 1984 vote based on 13 key populace verdicts on current White House party successes. According to the historian, his model would have accurately predicted every US presidential race from 1860 to 2020, beginning with 16th President Abraham Lincoln before the US Civil War through to 46th President Joe Biden.
One caveat is in order: He predicted a Gore victory in 2000, but an interruption of vote counting by the Supreme Court interfered with the outcome, with George W. Bush being inaugurated in January 2001. Several non-partisan research organizations independently continued recounts until all remaining votes were included. They reached the conclusion Gore would have won without the high court’s intervention.
The 13 Key model does not rely on polling data, but on what Lichtman says are answers to specific historically derived social science-related true-false statements about the current administration party’s candidate. If 8 or more questions warrant a response of “true” about the White House party and its candidate the incumbent party’s nominee will be elected. If less than 8 are “true” the opposition will win.
The history-based forecasting model, initially developed in 1981 by Lichtman and mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok, was first revealed n 1991 when Lichtman published “The 13 Keys to the White House,” according to the American University website.
The 13 Keys
- Party mandate: FALSE After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
- Contest: TRUE There is NO serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
- Incumbency: FALSE The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
- Third party: TRUE There is NO significant third party or independent campaign.
- Short term economy: TRUE The economy is NOT in recession during the election campaign.
- Long term economy: TRUE Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
- Policy change: TRUE The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
- Social unrest: TRUE There is NO sustained social unrest during the term.
- Scandal: TRUE The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
- Foreign/military failure: *TRUE / leaning FALSE* The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
- Foreign/military success: *leaning TRUE / FALSE* The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
- Charismatic Incumbent: FALSE The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
- Uncharismatic Challenger: TRUE The challenging party candidate is NOT charismatic or a national hero.
In the tabulation above, Lichtman’s answers are given except numbers 10 and 11 which we will evaluate separatelyhere. A few highlights are:
For numbers 2 and 3, when Biden bowed out of the race the party candidate was no longer the incumbent turning key 3 to false but the quick rise of Harris to be selected uncontested made key 2 true. There has been no wide-spread unrest, such as during the Vietnam War in 1968, and no Biden White house scandals, making keys 8 and 9 true for the incumbent party.
Key number 7 can be true even if the policy changes are not broadly appealing, it would just require a major change from the previous White House’s policy. With the passing of Biden’s $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, one of the most sweeping new legislative programs in the last several decades, the administration easily makes Key 7 true.
Empirically, numbers 1, 4 and 5 are simple objective statistical figures that meet the specific detailed requirements outlined in Lichtman’s book and countless interviews.
And finally, neither Harris nor Trump have broad charismatic appeal across party lines that match those of Theodore “Teddy” or Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama.
Key 10 – Foreign / Military Failure and Key 11 – Foreign / Military Success
The questionable areas are both related to the Biden administration’s handling of international crises involving Israeli Palestinian/Lebanon/Iran conflicts and the War in Ukraine, specifically Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022 and the ongoing aftermath.
For Key number 10 the answer Lichtman gives is “leaning false,” meaning this is a foreign / military failure. Objectively many Americans, particularly the Arab and Muslim-Americans and voters sympathetic to the plight of innocent civilians, would say this is definitely a failure. The stalemate in the war in Gaza, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths among Palestinian civilians and an ensuing humanitarian crisis, and Israel's engagement in a war with Lebanon and a conflict with Iran.
And, while Trump’s friendly attitude toward Netanyahu and the current Israeli government would be far worse for the Palestinians than a Harris White House, the 13 Keys system only references the Biden administration’s failure, especially in the eyes of many Democratic voters.
And how is the ongoing war brought to Ukraine by Russia’s full-scale invasion factoring into the 13 Key model? According to Lichtman, Key 13 is “leaning true.” This is based on Biden bringing together the “coalition of the West” after Feb. 24, 2022, to provide military aid to Ukraine, which prevented Russia from conquering the country and posing a threat to European NATO members, and even ushering in the new member nations, Finland and Sweden.
It raises the question of how Biden could have moved this from “leaning true” to “definitely true,” if he had not been timid in manifesting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s fears by not stepping up to provide weapons earlier, rather than with a piecemeal, slow-leak process of arming Ukraine. This along with lack of approval to use US made weapons against military targets inside Russia fearing Putin’s ephemeral red lines may have jeopardized his hand-picked replacement’s efforts, not to mention the lives of many Ukrainians (and Russia’s “meat grinder” conscripts, for that matter).
We don’t know if these 13 Keys, or some similar manifestation of foreign policy electoral factors, were anywhere in the Democratic calculus, but it could have been risking a “definitely false” for foreign policy success and could have doubled the instances of foreign policy failure.
At any rate, the Harris-Walz ticket has the minimum of 8 “true” responses for the 13 keys, with a tenuous hold on “true” foreign / military policy success in Ukraine. If Professor Lichtman is correct, today in the States, President-elect Kamala Harris can prepare to be an improved ally for Ukraine.
Hopefully, if Harris wins as Lichtman predicts, she will also bring a more pro-Ukrainian US Congress to Washington riding on her coattails.
And maybe tomorrow, Nov. 6, incumbent President Biden can finally allow Ukraine the freedom to fight for itself unencumbered by its friend’s conditional and restrictive help, without waiting for Jan. 20, 2025.