A professor who has correctly predicted the presidential winner for the last 30 years believes he has the presidential prediction game down to a science, and is predicting that Trump will win the election:
THE HILL – A professor who has accurately predicted the victor of every White House race since 1984 is not budging from his guess Donald Trump is winning this year.
“By the narrowest of possible margins, the keys still point to a Trump victory,” Allan J. Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University, told The Washington Post in an interview published Friday.
Lichtman told the Post his system revolves around a set of 13 true or false statements about the party currently holding the White House.
The scholar said if six or more statements are false, the incumbent party loses the presidency come Election Day.“Early on, the keys were inconclusive,” Lichtman said of the 2016 race. “And since that time, that sixth key has turned against the Democrats.
“And that is the third party key, and that is based on an assessment that you would expect the third party candidate, in this case the Libertarian [presidential nominee] Gary Johnson, to get five percent or more of the vote,” Lichtman added.
“That’s a big sign of discontent with the party holding the White House. And so, again on the knife edge, you had exactly six fatal keys against the incumbent Democrats.”
I wouldn’t put too much stock into this. After all, everyone is wrong sooner or later and this election is just the kind of circus that could cause the animals to attack the fans. In other words, it’s been a trainwreck from start to finish and traditional predictors haven’t necessarily held their water.
But with the polls tightening nationally and in some states, who knows, the professor could be right again.