Why Allan Lichtman’s 2024 Prediction Is Dead Wrong | StateOfDaniel

Kamala Harris will become the first  woman president of the United States.   Famed historian Alan Lichtman has made his  official prediction for the 2024 presidential   election. For those of you unfamiliar,  Professor Lichtman has created this rubric,   these so called 13 keys, which allegedly  predict who's going to win the White House. Now, I have a lot of issues with Lichtman's  prediction, as well as his claim that he's   accurately predicted nine out of the last  ten elections, so I'm going to go through   each of the thirteen keys and reveal where  I have my issues with Lichtman. The way this   works is that if six or more of the keys  are false, then Donald Trump will win. And In Alan Lickman's official  prediction, he only turned three   of the keys false. So that meant that  Kamala Harris will win. Now, for you,   Dr. Lickman, I know that you're on YouTube  a lot. If you just so happen to see this,   this is an open invitation. You're welcome  to come on the channel anytime and tell me   why you think I'm wrong and you're right when it  comes to your presidential election prediction. You're welcome to come on the channel anytime. I  know you do a lot of interviews on YouTube. Um,   but. If not, here is my critique of your  13 keys. Key number one is the midterm   gains key. Number one, the White House party  gained house seats between midterm elections.   The Democrats did better than expected  in 2022, but they still lost house seats. So the key is false. Remember, a  false key is good for Trump. Okay,   election results are election results. There  is no arguing there. He rated it false,   which is good for Trump. Obviously, I agree,  because like I said, you can't argue with,   uh, those midterm election results. The  Democrats underperformed. They lost seats. That's the end. Key number two  has to do with the incumbency key,   and this is where His 13 keys start getting  a little shaky. Take a look. Number two,   the incumbency key. The sitting president is  running for re election. Biden withdrew from   the race. If Biden stayed in, they  would have salvaged this one key. That's all. Hmm. Okay. So again, this is a  good thing for Donald Trump. But listen to   that argument right there, the incumbency  key. What Alan Lichtman is arguing is that   Joe Biden was the best Democrat in the  entire country to beat Donald Trump.   Does anyone actually believe that? And if you do  believe that, let me know in the comments below. But I have a hard time believing that anyone,  even maybe even Dr. Lichtman himself, actually   believes that? Because not only was Joe Biden  trailing Trump in the polls before the debate,   but he completely cratered in the  polls after the debate. And look,   I know a lot of people have issues with polls,  but in my mind, there was no question that not   only was Joe Biden not the best candidate to go  against Trump, but He was probably the worst,   because he was stumbling, he didn't know  where he was, uh, he couldn't keep track,   not to mention his unpopular policies and  the state of the world and the economy today. Yet, according to this rubric, Lichtman  is arguing that Joe Biden had the best   chance out of any Democrat to  beat Trump. On, on its surface,   I just disagree with that. And Lichtman's  argument here just seems to be, trust me,   bro. And that's why I have so many issues  with these 13 keys as well as Lichtman's,   uh, authority and his track record, because a  lot of people right now are freaking out, right? They're saying, oh, this guy, this Nostradamus  who accurately predicted nine out of the last   10 predictions is, uh, elections is now  predicting Kamala Harris. And people are   freaking out about this, but his track  record really, I'm sorry, no offense,   to me, is not that impressive. Uh, in 2012, he  predicted that Barack Obama was going to win. Well, guess what? In 2012, the polls predicted  that Barack Obama was going to win. In 2008,   Alan Lichtman predicted that Barack  Obama was going to win. Well, guess   what? The polls in 2008 definitely predicted  that Barack Obama was going to win. In 2004,   Alan Lichtman predicted that  George W. Bush was going to win. Oh, guess what? In 2004, the polls also  predicted that George W. Bush was going   to win. You can go back and back, example after  example. I, I, so, What I'm trying to say here   is that when you say nine out of the last ten  elections, that builds this image of authority,   right? And it's an appeal to authority,  but his predictions really aren't that,   that impressive in terms of how many of the last  ten elections were truly Truly shock elections. Really it was just 2016. Sure, you can argue  2000, but it to me, 2016 now in 2016, FYI,   I'm gonna leave a link down below, but I  accurately predicted in May of 2016 months   before the general election that Trump would  win. And this was my map. I correctly called   Michigan. I correctly called Pennsylvania.  You you wanna talk about track record? Well, um, according to Alan Lichtman, he,  he got it correct that Trump was going to   be impeached. But, Professor Lichtman  also predicted that we would have a   President Mike Pence. He obviously  got that wrong. Oh, and in 2016,   which Alan Lichtman supposedly got correct,  he can't even keep track of what he got right,   because in his official prediction, this  is a screenshot that I personally took. I didn't find this manipulated on the web. This  is one that I took from his official paper,   from his official prediction in 2016. The  keys to the White House. Let's zoom in. The,   um, This model has since then  successfully predicted the results   of the popular vote in all eight American  presidential elections from 1984 to 2012. So he is saying that his keys, these  13 keys, predict the popular vote. He   correctly predicted Donald Trump, but guess  what? Donald Trump did not win the popular   vote. Donald Trump won the Electoral  College. And on the online version,   uh, on the website where he is a professor at  American University, oh look, they edited it. This story has been updated with a  correction. It has been corrected to   read that Professor Lichtman's 13 key system  predicts the winner of the presidential race,   in other words, the Electoral College,  not the outcome of the popular vote. Well,   which is it? It seems like these 13 keys are  not only malleable in how you apply them,   but they're malleable in terms of how  he defines what they actually predict. So all of that to say, you know, I, obviously  he rated the incumbency key as false,   in other words, a key for Donald  Trump, but I, and I agree with that,   but I disagree with the premise that just  because, uh, Joe Biden was the incumbent,   somehow he would have done better, uh,  than Kamala Harris. Now, key number three. The primary contest. Number three, the  white house party avoided a primary   contest. The Democrats finally got smart  and united overwhelmingly behind vice   president Harris. So the key is true.  A true key that moves Harris off the   starting block. Okay. No argument there. We  all have lived through the last two months. Now I want you to keep that in mind that there  was no primary contest. I'm not going to argue   with that. It is true. I'm also agreeing  with But this is going to come back later on,   this primary contest talk. Now, key number  four, uh, has to do with about whether   or not a third party is running. Number  four, there's no third party challenger. RFK Jr. has dropped out of the race, and no other  third party candidate is anywhere close to the 10   percent polling threshold needed to turn this key.  It's true. Okay, I, again, agree with the fact   that that is true, But I, I just love, because  when you look at, I've watched a lot of interviews   of Dr. Lichtman, and I've watched a lot of his  YouTube videos, and he says that his system,   uh, is independent of the polling, has nothing  to do with the polling, and is better than the   polling, yet he frequently cites the polls, as he  just did then, as evidence that his system works. Well, If polls have nothing to do with  your system, then why do you keep citing   the polls? And, uh, why do you use  the polls as a threshold for what   you consider to be a third party candidate?  Because technically there are still, I mean,   Jill Stein is still in the race, to  my knowledge. Uh, but because she's   not polling at 10%, and why, by the way,  where did that 10 percent figure come from? According to Alan Lichtman, the third party  actually needs to be polling at 5 percent to   have any sort of difference, but he found  that the polls, from his experience, have um,   overestimated the third party, so he actually  doubled it to cut, to get to 10%. While that   suggests some sort of reliability on the polls,  if, you know, the polls have to be reliable to an,   If you can say, well, the formula is to  just double the third party polling, right? So I, I just think that that's a  little hypocritical to say, Hey,   my system is completely independent of the  polls. Then use polling as barometer for one   of your metrics. Key number five is short  term economy. And this is where I diverge   some from Professor Lichtman. Number  five, the short term economy is strong. Look, despite all the loose talk  about a so called vibe session,   the economy is not in recession. So this key is  true. Okay, so he's saying that the short term   economy is strong, and therefore that is true  and therefore strong for Kamala Harris. Now,   what Professor Lichtman is saying is that  it's not about what people feel, right? If you poll people right now, they all say, hey,  we're stressed, we think we're in a recession,   yada, yada, yada. But Lichtman is saying, it's  not what people feel, it's the government data,   and it's the government data that we  should trust. And when the government   says we're in a recession, then  that's when this key turns false. Now, here's my problem with that. If  you actually do research and if you   are knowledgeable about recessions, they are  almost always declared recessions. After the   fact. It, it, it, the government is never  proactive. Let me give you some proof.   Let's take a look at the New York Times.  There's been a lot of talk about this, uh,   earlier this year, um, the US government  has been over, been caught overreporting. As soon as March of this year, overreporting the  number of jobs and they just a few weeks ago,   admitted that they overestimated.  The jobs growth by 818, 000. This   is according to the New York times. So that  gray line on top here is what the government   officially reported. And then that blue  line is what they revised it down to. So in other words, the government said,  Hey, our economy was up here. And then,   months after the fact, they said, Oh, by  the way, we were wrong. We're revising it.   The jobs gains are down here. So, that's  my issue with the short term economy key,   is that the government is constantly revising  data. They're always behind the eight ball. It's not just that. Take a look  at this. U. S. economic growth,   last quarter, this is referring Quarter  one is revised down from one point, uh,   from 1.6% to 1.3%. So again, they revised  the entire economic growth down. So what's   the definition of a recession? It's two  back-to-back quarters of negative growth. So there we still see positive growth, but  even then there are some issues because is   that growth due to inflation? Is that growth  due to the stimulus that the government through   into the economy artificially propping it  up? Just questions. I'm not an economist,   but that's what I want to know. Now, let's  go back, again, talking, uh, about the short   term economy, and to prove my point that  the government is always behind the ball,   ask yourselves this, and feel free to pause this  question and leave a comment after I ask it. When did the 2008 recession begin?  Seriously, feel free to pause this   and let me know in the comments below. When  did the 2008 recession begin? I guarantee,   not guarantee, I would bet that most of  you would say October 2008. And in fact,   there's a Wikipedia page about this  global financial crisis in October 2008. Well, according to the New York Times,  the paper of record, US recession began   last December. Economists say this was  published December 2008. So in other words,   the economists, after all the data was in,  actually said, Nope, the recession began in   December 2007. So, um, they were really  behind. Now, here's what's interesting. So, okay, two, two things about that  before I continue, because this,   this gets really important. And it actually  proves that Lichtman perhaps was wrong in how   he applied the keys. Two things, number  one, most people believe that the 2008   recession began in October 2008, right? And  then point number two, as I just showed you,   the economists actually said that the recession  began December 2007, so a year before. Well, what was Lichtman's prediction in 2008? He  accurately predicted that the Republicans were   going to lose and Barack Obama was going to win.  But look at the short term economy. He rated the   short term economy as strong. He rated that as  true. In other words, Lichtman was completely   wrong on that. Now, flipping that key wouldn't  have changed his prediction, but it just proves   my point that the reason he was wrong on that  was because the government is always behind. And, um, because of that, uh, he got that  one key wrong. Now, the next key is the   long term economy. Number six, long term  economic growth during this presidential   term has been at least as good as the last  two terms. Growth during the Biden term is   far ahead of growth during the previous  two terms, so this key is clearly true. This key is clearly true, but it also leaves  out the nuance. It leaves out the context,   right? What is the context? The context  is that Joe Biden came into office during   the COVID pandemic. Many states were still shut  down. Many businesses, uh, were out of business,   shut down, and startups had yet to, you  know, reopen or even be founded, right? So Joe Biden was coming in, and we had to  have a bounce back, right? We had to reopen   from the shutdown. So a lot of this economic  growth. was really just a bounce back from the   COVID shutdown. And you can even look at the,  um, at best example here is the unemployment,   right? So you see unemployment spike  during COVID and then you see it come down. Well, when unemployment comes down, what's  the opposite of that job growth? And so as   unemployment comes down, job growth goes up.  Um, are, are those jobs because of Joe Biden   or are those jobs because of a bounce back?  I think we all know the answer. You want to   know how else the economy is actually  doing bad, even though the economic,   even though the government is saying  we're not officially in a recession? Well, take a look at credit card debt.  Why would people take out more credit   card debt? Why would people be more  in debt? If they were doing so well,   if the economy was so hot, why wouldn't they pay  for it in cash? By putting money on that card,   does that not suggest that people are living  paycheck to paycheck, that their dollars aren't   going as far as they used to, that they're unable  to make ends meet with what they're earning? Just my question. So I, um, I disagree  for sure on short term economy. You know,   I'm going to be lenient on long term economy and  give Lichtman that one just. You know, to be very,   uh, conservative, I guess, to give him the benefit  of the doubt. Now, point number seven of the 13   keys is policy change. Number seven, the White  House has made major changes to national policy. Rejoining the Paris Accords on climate change,  the CHIPS bill, the infrastructure bill,   the inflation reduction and climate change  bill. Clearly, the key is true. Yeah,   clearly the key is true. Now, whether or not  people actually agree with those policies,   uh, that's a different story, but  that's not what the key is asking. But based on the actual requirements  for the key, yes, it's obviously true.   Key number eight is social unrest. There is no  sustained social unrest during the term. There   have been sporadic protests, but nothing  approaching the massive, sustained social   unrest needed to turn this key. So it's true.  But schools are just going back to session. With new protests, couldn't this key flip?  Yes, there are a lot of protesters upset with   Biden's policies in the Middle East. But now  with Harris, Not Biden front and center that   has dampened social unrest number nine a dampened  social unrest I mean Kamala is still being heckled   everywhere. She goes we're seeing massive unrest  on college campuses now I get this isn't you know   as bad as things were and you know, like the late  60s or anything like that But, you know, in 2008,   again, going back to his prediction, um, social  unrest, key number eight, he rated that as true. Um, what was the social unrest in 2008?  Well, they were the giant anti war,   anti Iraq war protests against George W. Bush.  Now, obviously, those protests were huge. They,   you know, regularly, regularly drew  tens of thousands of people. But   those were peaceful protests, unlike the  protests we have today, the most peaceful. Mostly peaceful protests we have today. Those  were, I, so I, he rated that as true then,   but those were peaceful protests. Today, we  actually have violence on college campuses.   Violence against Jews. And he's gonna claim  it's, he's, he's not gonna turn that key? I,   I just don't get that at all. Key number nine  is whether or not there's a White House scandal. Number 9. The White House is untainted by  scandal. Oh, my favorite key. The scandal   key. And Republicans have been trying for  years to pin a scandal on President Biden   and come up empty. So the key is true. But come  on, Alan. Biden's horrific debate performance,   questions about his age, Hunter  Biden? Doesn't any of that count? No. There has to be at least some bipartisan  recognition. That's true. of actual corruption   that implicates the president himself and not a  family member. So the key remains true scandal.   I mean, Joe Biden is not running right now. The   fact that his health was covered up.  Isn't that a bipartisan consensus. If it wasn't bipartisan, then why did  Democrats kick him off their ticket? Now,   just because people still aren't  talking about Joe Biden's health   and the cover up of that, the cover up  by his administration. And by the way,   it implicates him himself because he didn't  have the humility. He didn't have the strength. He didn't have the courage to step down. He had  instead the selfishness and the greed to stay in   office. So it did implicate Joe Biden. But  just because no one's talking about it today,   FYI, because of the media, FYI, because of  Democrat influencers on social media just   making us push past that controversy,  that doesn't change the fact that there   was actual bipartisan consensus that  something was wrong with Joe Biden. If there was no bipartisan consensus, Professor  Lichtman, then Joe Biden would still be the   nominee. Now, key number 10 is whether  or not there's a charismatic incumbent.   Number 10, the incumbent party candidate  is charismatic. This is a very high   threshold key. You have to be a once in a  generational, broadly inspirational candidate. Harris has not met that standard, so this key  is false. I agree with him on that, uh, She can   barely read off a teleprompter. She obviously has  taken lessons trying to mimic Barack Obama's 2008   magic. Quite frankly, I don't think it's working  for her, so I agree then, and I also agree with,   uh, key number 11, his assessment on challenger  charisma, uh, which he ruled against Donald Trump. Take a look. Number 11. The challenger is  uncharismatic. Some people think Donald   Trump is a god, but he only appeals  to a narrow base. So that key is true,   but wait, that means Democrats will hold  on to the White House and Kamala Harris   will be the next president of the United  States. Now, even though Kamala Harris   has already won based on the 13 keys, if  you've been counting, that was only 11. There are still two more keys left. The  reason uh, Lichtman didn't go over them is   because even if they both turned, uh, Kamala  already had what was necessary to win. Now,   both of the Both of these had to do with,  uh, foreign affairs. But even if both   foreign policy keys flipped false, that would  mean that there were only five negative keys,   which would not be enough for Donald  Trump to regain the White House. So let's take a look at Alan Lichtman's  official prediction. Um, he had eight true,   which means Harris win, three false, which  are for Trump. And then the military failures,   uh, and military success, he left  undecided, um, as if. Afghanistan and,   uh, the war in Ukraine and, uh, China, all  of that, I think, um, are clearly false,   uh, clearly in favor of Trump and out  of favor, uh, for Biden and Harris. So, here is my, uh, analysis  of the keys, um, Number one,   I agree on midterm gains. No arguing there. Number  two, incumbent seeking reelection. Number three,   short term economy. I rated that as  red because as I showed you below,   or excuse me, as I showed you earlier,  the government has always been behind. Officially declaring a recession. So when you  take a look at the jobs, when you took it,   take a look at them always revising economic  growth downward. When you take a look at, uh,   how the 2008 crash was named. When you take a look  at a credit card debt, just my opinion, um, uh,   short term economy, I, I put a question  mark next to a strong longterm economy. Cause again, I want to be very conservative. here  and how I criticize him. So I'm going to give him   the benefit of the doubt. Personally, I  would have colored key number six red,   but to be, you know, just to, um,  to be the most jaded I can be,   I put a question mark. Same with key number  eight. Personally, I would have colored it red. But to be the most jaded I can be, I put a  question mark. Uh, key number nine, no scandal.   I turned that red because obviously I think  the scandal was Joe Biden's health. And again,   it was bipartisan. By his own metric, it was  bipartisan. If it wasn't, then Joe Biden would   still be the nominee. Uh, military failures,  both of those, and then charismatic incumbent. So, to me, that puts Trump at 7, which means  that Trump would win. Of course, all of this   is just my opinion, just my analysis. What do  you think? Do you agree with my assessment,   or do you agree with Alan Lichtman's? Let me  know your thoughts in the comments below. I   will do an, uh, an update on the polls.  I don't know if it'll be my next video,   or sometime over the weekend, but  I am gonna touch base on the polls. Um, just wanted to give you guys an update on  that. But On this, I wanted to focus strictly   on the 13 keys. If you haven't already, please  be sure to give me a thumbs up. I know it's a   simple thing to ask, but it really does help  me and the algorithm to reach more viewers   like you. Be sure to smash that subscribe  button and to check out one of these videos.