Allan Lichtman says he received death threats

Political historian Allan Lichtman has said that he received death threats after his incorrect prediction that Vice President Kamala Harris would win the 2024 presidential election over Donald Trump.

Lichtman’s model, which has accurately predicted nine out of the last 10 elections prior to this year, assesses the standing of the incumbent party using 13 true-or-false “keys” across areas like the economy, foreign policy, and domestic politics.

He said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “We’ve faced death threats, doxxing, swatting, and intimidation at our doorstep. We will not be bullied. Federal law enforcement is now alerted.”

“Doxxing” refers to searching for a person’s personal information with malicious intent and “swatting” to the act of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person’s address.

Newsweek contacted Lichtman for comment by email outside of normal working hours.

In September, the model led him to predict Harris would win, but he admitted to his mistake following the election, noting that many forecasters had also misjudged the outcome.

According to the model’s logic, if six or more of the 13 “keys” are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose; if five or fewer are false, the party is expected to retain the White House.

In a livestream posted to his YouTube channel on November 7, the so-called polling Nostradamus admitted he was wrong.

“But I was far from the only forecaster to be wrong. Most other models got it wrong,” Lichtman said. “It wasn’t just a singular failure of the keys. It was much broader than that.”

Ahead of the election, polling site FiveThirtyEight’s model gave Harris a 50 percent chance of winning and Trump a 49 percent chance.

During Thursday’s YouTube livestream, the professor stated that the issue wasn’t with the keys themselves and that he believed he had interpreted each correctly.

“My events are based on history,” Lichtman said.

The American University professor acknowledged that certain events in any given election could be impactful enough to alter the course of history.

“I think that’s what’s happened here,” he said.

“If you’re going to trash your sitting president so badly, that is going to taint any nominee associated with that failed president, and especially if you’re choosing his vice president.”

Lichtman also pointed out that it was “unprecedented” for Harris to have not participated in any primaries or caucuses before taking the nomination.

“I called the key as best I could, given an unprecedented situation because 99 percent of the delegated [members] united behind Harris, but I had to deal with an unprecedented situation.”

“The Keys to the White House” has been long criticized by some political scientists, statisticians, and journalists for being “prone to bias and subjectivity.”

Lichtman’s counterpart in the polling world, statistician Nate Silver, said in late September that the keys predicted a Trump victory, to which the historian responded that Silver didn’t “have the faintest idea how to turn the keys.”

What Are the Keys to the White House?

The 13 keys, as set out by the historian in a 2012 article for the Social Education journal, are these:

1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbent seeking reelection: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Strong long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. No foreign or military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Major foreign or military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

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