Allan Lichtman

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Allan Jay Lichtman is an American historian and political analyst who has taught at American University in Washington, D.C., since 1973. He is known for creating the Keys to the White House with Soviet seismologist Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981.

Occupation: political scientist, historian, university teacher, journalist
Citizenship: United States
Born: April 4, 1947

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Ronnie Lichtmansibling

The Case for Impeachmentknown for The Keys to the White Houseknown for The Case for Impeachmentknown for American Universityemployer Harvard Universityeducated at Brandeis Universityeducated at Stuyvesant High Schooleducated at United Statescountry of citizenship

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Allan Jay Lichtman (; born 4 April 1947) is an American historian and political analyst who has taught at American University in Washington, D.C., since 1973. He is known for creating the Keys to the White House with Soviet seismologist Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981.

The Keys to the White House is a system that uses 13 true/false criteria to predict whether the presidential candidate of the incumbent party will win or lose the next election. The system and Lichtman's predictions based on it have received extensive media coverage. He has accurately predicted the outcomes of most presidential elections since 1984 using his interpretations of the system. However, he incorrectly predicted that Kamala Harris would win the 2024 election, and the nature and accuracy of his predictions for Al Gore in 2000 (who lost the election but won the popular vote) and Donald Trump in 2016 (who won the election but lost the popular vote) have been disputed.

Lichtman ran for the U.S. Senate seat in Maryland in 2006; he finished sixth in the Democratic primary. In 2017, Lichtman authored the book The Case for Impeachment, which laid out multiple arguments for an impeachment of Donald Trump.

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Also known as Alan J. Lichtman, Allan J. Lichtman, Allan Jay Lichtman

The Keys to the White House

Lichtman is best known for the election forecasting system presented in his books The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House. He has correctly predicted nine of the eleven presidential elections held since 1984 by using his keys.

The system uses 13 historical factors ("keys") to predict whether the election for president of the United States will be won by the nominee of the party holding the presidency. The keys were selected based on their correlations with the presidential election results from 1860 through 1980, using statistical methods adapted from the work of geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok, unproven methods for predicting earthquakes. Lichtman originally defined his model as predicting the outcome of the popular vote.

In 2000, Lichtman predicted a win for the Democratic front-runner, Vice President Al Gore. While Gore won the popular vote, Republican nominee George W. Bush won the Electoral College and was elected president. Lichtman argued that there were multiple reasons to believe that the wrong candidate had won Florida and the Presidency, stating that election officials had purged alleged disenfranchised felons from the rolls with a flawed list of felons that overrepresented Democratic African-Americans and underrepresented primarily Republican Hispanics. Critics further charged that a confusing ‘‘butterfly’’ ballot in Palm Beach County had led more than a thousand intended Gore voters mistakenly to vote for Buchanan, that Republican officials had tampered with absentee ballots in two counties, and that election officials had disqualified as invalid a vastly greater percentage of ballots cast by African-Americans than whites.

In September 2016, Lichtman predicted a win for Republican nominee Donald Trump. Trump lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College and was therefore elected president. Lichtman claimed (after the 2016 election) that since the contested result in 2000, he began predicting the outcome of the Electoral College rather than the popular vote.

In his final 2016 prediction, given in a Washington Post interview on September 23, 2016, Lichtman did not mention the popular vote. He said, "The Keys are 13 true false questions, where an answer of true always favors the reelection of the party holding the White House, in this case, the Democrats. Based on the 13 keys, it would predict a Donald Trump victory". Lichtman simultaneously predicted that Trump would be impeached, which made sense only if he were predicting Trump's election, not a popular vote plurality. In a follow-up interview with Fox News, Lichtman reiterated he was predicting which party would govern over the next four years: "My system is 13 true/false questions where an answer of true always favors reelection of the party in power."

The media, scholars, and President-elect Donald Trump widely credited Lichtman with a correct 2016 prediction. But Lichtman also wrote in 2016, in both a book and a separate academic paper, that the keys predict only the national popular vote, not the votes of individual states. He also wrote in 2016 that in the only three elections since 1860 when the popular vote diverged from the Electoral College tally, his keys predicted the popular vote winner. However, he explained in both the book and article that despite not predicting state tallies the keys still identified which party will govern after the election, saying, "When five or fewer of these propositions are false, or turned against the party holding the White House, that party wins another term in office. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins," and "If the nation has fared well during the past four years, voters will give the White House party – in this case the Democrats -- another four years in office. If the nation has fared poorly, voters will give the challenging party a chance to govern from the Oval Office."

2024 presidential election failed prediction

In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, amid widening calls by Democratic Party representatives, members, voters, and supporters of President Joe Biden to withdraw from the race in favor of another candidate with "better chances", Lichtman called that demand a "foolish, destructive escapade", accusing "pundits and the media" of "pushing" Democrats into a losing choice. He added that those calling for Biden's resignation had "zero track record" of predicting election outcomes.

On July 21, 2024, Biden announced he was withdrawing from the race but would serve the remainder of his term. Vice President Kamala Harris was given the Democratic presidential nomination the next month. On September 5, 2024, Lichtman predicted that Harris would win the election.

On November 5, 2024, contrary to Lichtman's prediction, Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. This was the first time Lichtman inaccurately predicted both the popular vote and the Electoral College outcome. The next day, he said he had not foreseen the fall in support from Harris after her debate performance, and also blamed poor planning by the Democratic Party and "disinformation spread on social media" for Harris's loss. He still defended his method, saying that the most recent election was an anomaly because the incumbent president withdrew a few months before the election and Trump's aggressive 11th-hour campaign stretch was much more effective with the working class and young voters than Harris's more subdued approach. Lichtman said the keys would be more accurate for more conventional elections in the future that included primaries and newer candidates.

Lichtman later claimed that several unprecedented features affected the 2024 election, including the "Democrats... openly and viciously trashing their sitting president right out in public". He said the keys depend on "a rational, pragmatic electorate", which he argued was compromised by widespread disinformation. He cited Elon Musk as a figure who damaged the electorate's ability to vote "rationally".

Allan Lichtman

Allan Lichtman

Article

Article

Early life and education

Career

Teaching

2006 U.S. Senate race in Maryland

Other commentary and writing

The Keys to the White House

2024 presidential election failed prediction

Recognition

Books

Related journals

About Allan Lichtman

Article

Article

Early life and education

Career

Teaching

2006 U.S. Senate race in Maryland

Other commentary and writing

The Keys to the White House

2024 presidential election failed prediction

Recognition

Books

Related journals