Political Historian who has Correctly Predicted the Outcomes of all Presidential Elections Since 1984 Says Joe Biden will beat President Donald Trump in the November General Election

The historian who is known affectionately as the granddaddy of presidential prediction models says that Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden is a shoo-in to win the 2020 presidential race.

The American University historian Allan Lichtman’s predictions are worth paying attention to because he has accurately forecast every election since 1984, including President Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016 over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

In an op-ed video in the New York Times published on Wednesday, Lichtman’s model, per usual, outlines his 13 keys designed to decide who will emerge victorious to the White House on Nov. 3rd. It includes factors like the advantage of incumbency, long and short-term economic figures, scandals, social unrest, and more.

Method

Lichtman first developed the Keys system in 1981, in collaboration with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, founder of the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics. The methodology used in the development of the Keys is described in Keilis-Borok and Lichtman (1981) and Lichtman (2008, 2010a).

As shown in Table 1, each of the thirteen keys is stated as a threshold condition that always favors the re-election of the party holding the White House. For example, Key 5 is phrased as “The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.” Each key can then be assessed as true or false prior to an upcoming election and the winner predicted according to a simple decision rule.

Unlike other systems for predicting election results, the Keys do not assume a fixed relationship between election results and one more dependent variables, such as economic growth or presidential approval ratings. Rather predictions are based on an index comprised of the number of false or negative keys: When five or fewer keys are false, the incumbent party wins; when any six or more are false, the challenging party wins.

This time around, Lichtman’s prognostication should come as little surprise given national polls indicate that Biden commands a substantial lead over the incumbent.

Biden, polling at 49.4%, holds a seven-percentage-point lead over Trump at 42.4%, according to a national poll average compiled by Real Clear Politics.

Lichtman says Biden leads Trump on seven of the 13 true-or-false criteria he looks at to assess the winner of a race to the White House, which includes factors such as the economy, foreign policy, scandals, social unrest and even the charisma of the candidate.