The 13 Keys: Why I Think Allan Lichtman’s 2024 Harris Prediction Will Be Wrong

The Keys to the White House is a model developed in 1981 by Allan Lichtman and Vladimir Keilis-Borok which has supposedly predicted every single US Presidential election since then. Keilis-Borok was a mathematical geophysicist who was in business of predicting earthquakes, whereas Lichtman is a political historian. They worked together to analyse every US presidential election since Abraham Lincoln’s in 1860, and found that a certain set of criteria could accurately predict every election. With Vladimir’s passing over a decade ago, Lichtman has been the figurehead of the system, and has written numerous books on the topic.

How Does the 13 Keys Model Work?

The model consists of 13 true or false criteria, i.e. The 13 Keys, and if at least 6 of the keys are false (in the opposing party’s favour), then the incumbent party is predicted to lose the White House. These are the keys in question:

1. Party Mandate — Did the incumbent party gain seats in the US House of Representatives in the most recent midterm elections?
2. No Primary Contest — Was there a significant contest for the incumbent party nomination?
3. Incumbent seeking re-election — Is the incumbent party candidate the sitting President?
4. No third party — Is there a significant third party/independent campaign?
5. Short-term economy — Is the economy NOT in recession during the election campaign?
6. Long-term economy — Did economic growth during the term equal or exceed average growth over the past two terms?
7. Major policy change — Did the incumbent administration bring about major policy change?
8. No social unrest — Has there been major social unrest during the term?
9. No scandal — Is the sitting president themself free from scandal?
10. No foreign or military failure — Has there NOT been any major military failures during the term?
11. Major foreign or military success — Has the incumbent administration achieved any significant foreign or military success?
12. Charismatic incumbent — Is the incumbent candidate significantly charismatic or a national hero?
13. Uncharismatic challenger — Is the challenging party candidate NOT charismatic or a national hero?

As you can see, the model considers the economy, candidate personalities, foreign success, incumbent party internal struggles, presidential scandal, and social unrest. These questions may seem subjective at first glance, but Allan Lichtman lays out a method for objectively answering each of these questions in his book The Keys to the White House.

Has the model always worked?

This is where things become complicated. Since 1981, Lichtman’s model has correctly predicted the winner in every electoral college vote except for the 2000 election, where Al Gore lost to George Bush.

This election was unique, however, in that Al Gore still won the popular vote by hundreds of thousands of votes; this was the first election in over a century where the winner of the popular vote did not also win the electoral college vote, which determines who wins the presidency. If you don’t know about the electoral college vote, you should watch this.

After the 2000 election, Lichtman argued that he had actually intended to predict the winner of the popular vote, so his model remained undefeated. However, in the run up to the 2016 election Lichtman predicted Trump would win the popular votes. He was wrong. Although Trump won the electoral college vote and therefore became President, he lost the popular vote to Hilary Clinton by almost 3 million votes!

Now, Lichtman is back to claiming that the 13 Keys will predict the winner of the electoral college — likely a tactic to give himself credit for being one of the only political analysts to have correctly foreseen Trump’s win. He also now admits that his 2000 prediction was incorrect, but claims Al Gore should have won the election due to election fraud in the deciding state of Florida. This argument does have some weight, but Lichtman has nevertheless modified the intended outcome of his model over the decades to prop-up its credibility.

What is Lichtman’s 2024 prediction?

In the week before the first Presidential debate between Trump and Harris in early September of 2024, Lichtman predicted that Trump could have a maximum of five keys in his favour come election day, one key short of the six required to predict a Republican takeover of the White House. He thinks Harris will win, but I disagree.

Why I think Trump will win

I should start by saying Lichtman’s model obviously has credibility, having predicted almost every election since the civil war; I just don’t agree with his answers to some of the aforementioned 13 questions this time around. There are also some important factors that are unique to this election, and I anticipate these could break the model due to their lack of representation in it.

Incumbency

The 13 Keys model leans heavily on incumbency, asking questions under the impression that only one candidate is incumbent. The 2024 election is unique in that one candidate is a former President who served a full term and the other is the incumbent vice-president. In my view, incumbency has given candidates an edge in previous elections because voters can predict future behaviour of a current president on the basis of their previous term. Voters can more easily trust a candidate who has a proven track record as opposed to an unexperienced candidate. In this election, Trump may not be the current President, but he has recent experience in the role nevertheless. People don’t need to imagine what a Trump presidential term will look like, they can directly compare the state of their country under the Biden-Harris and Trump administrations.

All of this is assuming that Harris is tied to the current Biden administration in the eyes of the voter, however. Even if this isn’t the case and Harris is perceived as an unknown without a track record, her lack of incumbency will still disadvantage her.

The Economy

Lichtman has both the short-term and long-term economy in Harris’s favour, and this is obviously wrong. In my opinion, due to high-levels of inflation and the resulting increased cost of living, Biden’s record on the long-term economy is certainly not favourable. Additionally, lower and middle class wages have been stagnant whereas they increased during the Trump administration. According to polls, most Americans also believe that Trump would be better at driving a prosperous domestic economy than Biden or Harris — again, I believe this has a lot to do with Trump’s resume.

Immigration

Obviously there isn’t a border crisis key — at least an explicit one — but immigration will certainly play a significant role in the 2024 election just like it did in the Trump-Clinton contest. At least ten million illegal immigrants have entered the US since Biden was sworn in, and this is mainly because the incumbent administration decided to open the southern border. Although there are is a high ‘wall’ separating some of Mexico and border states, there is still ample opportunity for anyone to just walk over the border where fences are yet to be erected. Due to policy implemented by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, when border patrol agents encounter illegal immigrants they are simply required to process them and let them be on their way. After processing, ‘illegals’ are required to attend a court hearing in which they may be deported, but because of the sheer number of people crossing, if you were to cross the border today you would likely not have a court date until at least 2029 due to a deportation court backlog.

Needless to say, many Americans aren’t happy about this, excessive immigration can cause infrastructure shortages; for example, hospital emergency rooms in some towns are nearly inaccessible to citizens because they have been overcome by illegal immigrants who can receive emergency care without a passport.

Foreign Affairs

Trump was successful with regards to foreign affairs; no major wars started under his watch and two have started with Biden in office, with one ramping up (increased tensions between Israel and surrounding nations) with only 4 weeks until the election. Again, Trump is more of an incumbent than Harris is, and the people tend to vote for the incumbent in times of war. Lichtman has this area as a toss-up, but I think the Republicans have the foreign and military keys safely in the bag.

Finally, the Republicans have run a more visible and outreaching campaign. Trump has recently appeared unscripted on the podcasts and YouTube channels of Lex Fridman, Theo Von, Adin Ross and Dave Ramsey to name a few. This is in stark contrast to Harris, who rarely appears outside of a scripted environment.

There is the argument to be made that Trump is getting old (approaching 80) and his ‘sore loser’ response to the 2020 election result and lack of judgement around the January 6th attempted insurrection has tarnished his reputation as a leader of the people; I would say that if he does lose the election, it will be because of this.