Pollster Nate Silver IS WRONG: Nostradamus Of Prez Elections Allan Lichtman FORECASTS

he's been dubbed the no ramus of presidential elections historian American University Professor Allan lickman has correctly predicted outcomes of presidential contest since 1984 except for the one Bush versus Gore in 2000 his formula includes 13 different elements that he calls Keys candidate has to meet the vast majority when he joined us in early July before President Biden exited the race he predicted Biden would beat Trump and of course with the unprecedent switch of the democratic nominee Professor lickman has forecasted Harris will Top the former president uh contrasting with poer Nate Silver's uh predictions that we were just talking about earlier uh that said uh that the former president will be the winner so who will it be here to discuss what his keys are uh is Professor lickman uh we are delighted to have you uh join us and Professor I'd like to just start it off with you have Harris taking eight of those keys Trump having three of those keys and two of those keys are somewhat unclear in terms of the foreign policy element of it what went into deciding uh that that super majority for uh Harris with those keys let me explain uh my system ignores the pundits who don't have a scientific basis for their opinions and the pollers like Nate silver who are so often wrong when I predicted Trump in 2016 silver was predicting a win for Hillary Clinton at about three quarters then of course when she lost he said see I told you there was more than a 20% chance she would lose so he can never be right he can never be wrong he's just a clerk who compiles polls and also has no scientific basis the keys are a scientific model that tap into how presidential elections really work as votes up or down on the strength and performance of The White House party and the way it works if the White House Party loses six or more keys they are predicted losers otherwise they are predicted winners and definitively Parris has lost six of the needed six keys to predict her defeat party mandate based on US House losses for Democrats in 2022 incumbency because the sitting president is no longer running and incumbent Charisma because she's not a Franklin Roosevelt the only other two keys that are in play are the two foreign policy military policy failure and success keys and I split them I said Gaza is a failure it's a humanitarian disaster with no end in sight we don't have boots on the ground but we are deeply invested there and I gave Biden a success for Ukraine it was Biden and Biden alone that put together the Coalition of the West that stopped Putin from conquering Ukraine and threatening our NATO allies is continued support has let Ukraine survive for more than two and a half years and even bring the battle to Russia this will go down as an historic presidential achievement so that's four Keys too short of the six Keys needed to predict Harris's defeat even if you didn't believe about the foreign policy success that's still just five Keys the worst case scenario she's still one key short of the six Keys needed to predict her defeat that's why my prediction and of course I'm a human being I could be wrong but I have a track record of 40 years before I think Nate Silva was even born and uh I am predicting we're going to have a path breaking president the first woman president the United States and the first president of African and East Asian descent so I suspect if Nate silver were here he would say that you know your opinion on foreign policy matters whether you approve or disapprove he would say well that's not scientific at all what I do analyzing polls is the actual science and and is somewhat predictive and you know you're right that if if we say something has a 70% % chance of happening and then it doesn't happen it doesn't mean necessarily that someone who predicted it would have a 70% chance of happening was wrong because if you flip a coin 10 times and seven of our heads and three are Tails that's in the expected result and particularly in this election where it seems like it's basically a 5050 and it could go either way you know what is the is the confidence really coming from from fundamental science which has it Nate silver would say at at pretty pretty close pretty dead even polls are not predictors that's where Nate silver goes totally wrong polls are snapshots and if you look at his predictions they're constantly changing depending upon the next poll they're totally unstable they have no basis plus Nate silver doesn't tell you that the error margin of polls is vastly greater than what he would tell you is the plus and minus 3% that's pure statistical error that's the era you would get if you had a huge jaw of green and red balls and you pulled out a sample and estimated the percentage of green and red balls in the jar but human beings are not green and red balls uh most people don't respond to pollsters they may lie they may not have focused yet and most critically no one's voted yet so they have to guess at the who the likely voters are and every pollster has a different guess and these nons statistical errors are not random they are unidirectional they're why Nate Silva was so wrong about 2016 and like uh generals uh fighting the next War using the last war they've tried to correct and the result is they're now underestimating Democratic voting strength as demonstrated by the 2022 elections when Nate Silver's Red Wave never emerged uh and also the offe elections of 2023 and the special elections of 2024 in that Marquee race New York congressional seat that was once held by the disgraced George Santos the poll on the eve of the election had the Democrat up by one point he won by eight points out performing the polls by seven points so don't deceive your to thinking that a clerk like Nick Sila who just compiles polls is doing anything scient even his probabilities are made up they're fabricated they're not real probabilities which are based on the law of large numbers you'd have to have many many many elections so let me ask you this let me ask you this so you you think and you had predicted I that's what we read that you had predicted Biden was going to be TR you think the polls showing that Biden was going to lose okay stop okay all right stop you've misrepresent Ed me and that really makes me angry what I said was I did not have a final call and I haven't made it until a few days ago months ago I said a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose I said it can happen I've made no final prediction but a lot would have to go wrong don't put words in my mouth so do you I'm perfectly capable of expressing myself yeah right so what I was going to ask do you think the polls that showed Biden losing massively to Donald Trump in let's say the last month or two of his campaign before he did drop out do you think those were accurate polls we have no idea whether they're accurate polls or not because Biden is not running anymore so that that's sheer nonsense that's sheer speculation that's not science that's science fiction well and Professor liman credit where credit is due you were one of the few people that got 2016 right and got some grief for that prediction heading into to to that election so I certainly give you certainly give you credit on that front I wonder if you could talk about the key specifically around third party uh so did that key flip uh when RFK stepped back from that race or or I I I know you had that threshold probably about 10% na nationally which he had uh months ago but certainly not you know in the leadup to him making the decision to drop out yeah before I answer that I need to clean up this notion that my analyses of foreign policy successes and failures are subjective none of my keys are subjective some are judgmental but they are very specifically and carefully defined if you read my book predicting the next president and I've answered these questions developmentally since 1860 all the way to the presid RFK Jr was fizzling even before he suspended his campaign in recognition of the fact that he was falling apart and and going nowhere I certainly would have called the key in favor of the Democrats even before he pulled out because he was down in the low single to Mid single digits so uh and his pulling out definitively uh turned the key true so what could uh if you predict that Harris is ultimately going to win what could Donald Trump do in the next several weeks to could he reverse any of those keys here's the big message of the keys you know even if the pollsters were accurate they don't tell you anything about how elections work they're just looking at you know these numbers the keys tell you how elections really work that it's governing not campaigning that counts no one has ever been able to successfully have a long-term track record in predicting election by looking at the campaign based upon the campaign Hillary Clinton should have won a landslide she won all the debates she raised more money she had more ads she was more experienced she had a better ground game and she still lost same thing could be said about John kery in 2004 So based on my system there really isn't anything that Donald Trump could do with respect to the campaign to change the verdict of the keys which are based on the big picture of governing Professor lickman also too one of the keys uh is obviously avoiding uh a serious primary how important do you credit the vice president kind of coalescing the party in Rapid uh form uh to not only obviously seal the nomination deal but avoid any kind of serious primary challenges one of these Keys it's a great question I was very critical of the Democrats number one for trashing their incumbent President right out in public that was not necessary and number two it looked like they were both going to create an open seat and have a big party brawl losing two of my keys incumbency and Contest no White House Party since 1900 has ever won when there's an open seat and a contest but somehow I'm not saying they listen to me but at least they got a spine and a brain and United behind Harris and secured what looked like a lost contest key and that's critical as you see you know she's one or two keys short of the six Keys needed to predict her defeat so had they lost the contest key that would might have made it a difference plus a big party brawl could have had a negative effect on other Keys as well like social unrest or even third party Professor lickman thank you so much for joining us we appreciate it thank you Professor pleasure go Eagles [Music] [Music]