Allan Lichtman to CNN: My 13 Keys Weren’t Wrong, the Voters Were

There isn’t a knife sharp enough to pierce this man’s inflated ego.

Allan Lichtman, a professor at American University, has been a self-proclaimed oracle of elections for decades now. His trademarked system of applying 13 “keys” to a current election cycle has more often than not seemed to predict the winner.

Well, Lichtman got it very wrong this year despite insisting that his keys hold the power to predict winners and losers with impeccable accuracy. Lichtman predicted, months ago, that Kamala Harris would sail to an easy victory over Donald Trump. Oops, what happened?

Lichtman, now licking his wounds in embarrassment, is on a media tour detailing why his keys were correct but the racist, sexist, and uneducated voters got it wrong by electing Donald Trump:

Where to even begin with this guy? The default answer from Democrats is that “uneducated” voters put Donald Trump in the White House which is what Lichtrman echoes in true-elitist fashion. It’s not that the keys were wrong or that Lichtman incorrectly applied them, it’s that the voters weren’t watching the same MSNBC shows that Lichtman was. In other words, the professor is now too far out of touch to objectively apply his methods and produce a prediction that matches reality outside the faculty lounge.

To begin with, the bullet-point list of keys (see below) is subjective and it always has been. Lichtman proved that this year by giving the “No Scandal” key to Biden by marking it “True,” an objectively indefensible position. Biden has long been tainted by his family’s documented ties to foreign money and influence, something that was made openly provable by the Hunter Biden laptop detailing large amounts of money flowing to various members of the Biden family including portions set aside for “the big guy,” referring to Joe Biden.

Lichtman claims that the scandal wasn’t “real” in his opinion or not a bit enough deal, so he scored that key for Kamala Harris.

There’s also a key for whether the challenger of the incumbent party is considered “Uncharismatic” or not. Lichtman doesn’t like Donald Trump so he marked this key as “True” indicating another win for Kamala Harris. Compared to Harris and her word-salad non-answers, Trump is infinitely more charismatic and engaging with his speeches and rhetoric.

What about social unrest? That’s a broadly defined term that could mean a lot of things. At the onset of the Hamas war against Israel in October 2023, college campuses erupted with pro-Hamas protests that sustained for weeks. The unrest grew uncontrollable at times and could be seen as a level of civil unrest that would warrant flipping the “No Social Unrest” key to “False” which would put it in Donald Trump’s favor.

Beyond the Israel-Hamas unrest, what about social unrest from an uncontrolled southern border? Many large cities are experiencing untold problems with influxes of illegal immigrants. The border region itself from Texas to California has become a war zone at times. Unfortunately, there’s no key to account for this type of unrest so never mind.

If we flip three keys in favor of Trump, he would be the predicted winner of this subjective list.

Alas, it was not the misinformed professor turning the keys that made them wrong, it was Elon Musk’s “disinformation” that caused voters to disregard the holy sacrament of the 13 keys in 2024.

Lichtman’s journey from semi-objective-observer to highly-partisan-MSNBC-guest is directly related to the typical Trump Derangement Syndrome course of infection. The first major symptom is a lack of critical thinking and an assumption that anything Trump says or does is bad and making sure he never wins again is the only acceptable course forward.

In that regard, Lichtman broke his own keys but his excuse is that the country is too racist and sexist to realize why he’s correct.

If you have 2 minutes to spare, Here’s Licthman doing his election night live stream realizing that he called it wrong and Donald Trump will be the next president. Let the meltdown begin:

Allan Lichtman’s 13 “keys to the White House.”

  1. Party Mandate After the midterm elections: the incumbent party holds
    more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did
    after the previous midterm elections.
  2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party
    nomination.
  3. Incumbency: The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.
  4. Third-party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
  5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election
    campaign.
  6. Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or
    exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
  7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in
    national policy.
  8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
  9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by a major
    scandal.
  10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major
    failure in foreign or military affairs.
  11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major
    success in foreign or military affairs.
  12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a
    national hero.
  13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic
    or a national hero.
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Nate Ashworth

The Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Election Central. He's been blogging elections and politics for over a decade. He started covering the 2008 Presidential Election which turned into a full-time political blog in 2012 and 2016 that continues today.

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