Polling ‘Nostradamus’ – who’s correctly picked almost every election winner for 40 years – drops major hint about his final prediction_l
An historian who’s been called the ‘Nostradamus’ of predicting winners of presidential elections has dropped a major hint as to who he thinks will take the White House come 2025.
Allan Lichtman, who has correctly called nine out of the 10 last elections, said in a YouTube livestream Thursday he is nearing his ‘final prediction’ for the 2024 race.
‘You don’t have to be patient for a whole lot longer. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend … and within days after that the prediction should be out,’ the American University professor said on the stream with his son, Sam. ‘And this will be a final prediction.’
While being coy about his ultimate forecast, Lichtman gave away a big clue by slamming a rival pollster, Nate Silver, who recently said Trump was his favorite.
‘I just saw today the most absurd prediction,’ Lichtman said, referring to Silver.
According to Nate Silver’s model, former President Donald Trump has the edge on Vice President Kamala Harris
Allan Lichtman, who has correctly called nine out of the 10 last elections, strongly disagrees with Silver’s methodology, perhaps betraying who he thinks has the best chance this cycle
‘Just a few days ago, he said the probability is that Kamala Harris is going to win the election. Now, just a few days later he switched.’
His first issue with Silver’s latest prognosis is that it’s ‘not a real probability.’
‘If you flipped a coin a million times, it would converge on 50 percent heads and 50 percent tails. But you can’t play the election a million times, you can only play the election once and in fact, you haven’t even played it at all since no one has voted. So he just fabricated this probability from the polls,’ he said.
Lichtman added that Silver’s model during the 2016 election said Hillary Clinton was overwhelmingly likely to beat Trump.
In the months and years since Trump’s upset victory, Silver said he gave Trump a 30 percent chance to win, which was much more than what other outlets thought was possible.
But Lichtman doesn’t buy that explanation.
‘The predictions mean nothing because he disavows them if he’s wrong and trumpets them if he’s right,’ he argued.
Nate Silver, pictured, believed Hillary Clinton was overwhelmingly likely to win in 2016 based on polls. Lichtman thinks his model is superior because it doesn’t rely on polls at all
Lichtman also took issue with the very specific number Silver threw out as Trump’s probability of victory: 52.4 percent.
‘Is it possible, Sam, to measure the probability of a Trump victory down to the tenths of a percent?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘It makes it look scientific. It makes it look real. It makes it look “my God this guy is very precise.” In fact, it is exactly the opposite of precision.’
Before President Joe Biden dropped out, Lichtman was saying a lot would have to go wrong for him to lose and that Democrats would be making ‘a huge mistake‘ if they decided to replace him.
He’s also said Trump’s 34 felony convictions aren’t likely to sway the election in any meaningful way.
Lichtman first correction prediction came in 1984 when he said Ronald Reagan would win the presidency.
He also predicted Trump would win in 2016 a little over month before the election, then accurately thought Biden would unseat him 2020.
Lichtman’s system of predicting presidential races, which he calls the ’13 Keys,’ have been around since the 1980s.
He says the technique enables him ‘to predict the outcome of the popular vote solely on historical factors and not the use of candidate-preference polls, tactics or campaign events.’
Silver’s model certainly takes influence from polls, the most recent of which have found Trump ahead in six crucial swing states.
Another hint from Lichtman as to which way he thinks the winds are blowing came when he condemned Trump for his campaign stop at Arlington National Cemetery last Monday.
Trump is pictured at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, August 26, during a ceremony honoring Sgt. Nicole Gee’s sacrifice. Following the visit, Trump’s team posted a video to his TikTok with clips of his visit to the cemetery, which is considered hallowed grounds for the US Military
Arlington National Cemetery is considered hallowed ground in the US military and is managed by the Army. As such, it’s illegal to conduct any sort of campaign activity there.
In an unusually forceful rebuke of the former president, the Army defended a cemetery staff member who clashed with Trump advisers when they took photos and video in a restricted area.
‘There’s claims that there was a physical altercation with the staffer who quite properly was trying to stop them from violating federal law and using Arlington cemetery shamelessly for political purposes,’ Lichtman said.
A member of Trump’s team said the staffer tried to ‘physically block’ them, adding that a private photographer of theirs had been granted permission to be on the premises.
