Joe Biden is leading President Trump in the polls — nationally and in a number of swing states.
But a voter could be forgiven for not putting too much stock in those numbers — especially after Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump in 2016 turned into an electoral college win for the Republican.
American University professor Allan Lichtman doesn’t rely on the polls for his prognostications, however, and he has an impressive track record, as recounted by the New York Times in a opinion post and accompanying video.
The historian was among the few predicting Trump’s win, and he did it based on 13 “keys to the White House,” meant to foresee a political earthquake. If six or more of them favor the challenger, he says, it indicates a changing of the guard.
“Donald Trump sent me a note — ‘Congrats, professor. Good call.’ — in his big, Sharpie letters,” Lichtman says in the Times video.
He’s predicted every race correctly since 1984, but he notes that up until the 2000 race, he made his prediction based on the popular vote. After George Bush defeated Al Gore while trailing nationally, he began naming the electoral college winner.
“When I first developed the system in ‘81, you had to all the way back to 1888 to find a divergence between the popular vote and the electoral college vote,” he says, having looked at every election from 1860 to 1980 in his initial research.
His successes include calling the 1984 race for Ronald Reagan two years in advance and predicting George Bush would beat Michael Dukakis in 1988 when Bush was behind in the polls.
Of his 13 keys, Lichtman counts seven this time going against the incumbent’s party — wins in the midterm elections, strong short term economy, strong long-term economy, no social unrest, no scandals, major foreign/military successes and charismatic incumbent. That would indicate a Biden win.
“The pollsters and the pundits cover elections as though they were horse races, but history tells us voters are not fooled by the tricks of the campaign,” Lichtman says. “Voters vote pragmatically according to how well the party holding the White House has governed the country.”
Polls, he said, are “snapshots in time. None of this in the end has any impact whatsoever on the outcome of a presidential election.”
He cautions, however, that might not be the whole story.
“Don’t just take my word for it,” he says. “There are forces at play outside the election — voter suppression, Russian meddling. It’s up to you, the voter, to decide the future of our democracy.”
