Presidential historian Allan Lichtman dismissed the impact of this week's presidential debate on his prediction that Democrat nominee Kamala Harris will win the election over Republican Donald Trump, calling it "irrelevant" and telling Newsmax that "it's governance, not campaigning, that counts."
Lichtman, known as the "Nostradamus" of U.S. elections because he has correctly predicted the outcome in nine of the past 10 presidential races, told "American Agenda" on Wednesday that he made his prediction last week intentionally.
"I deliberately issued my prediction that Kamala Harris will become the first woman president of the United States … before the debate because I wanted to make the point that it's governance, not campaigning, that counts. And my predictions do not vary depending on the day-to-day events of the campaign," Lichtman said.
Which is why Lichtman, who's a distinguished professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C., called Tuesday night's debate "irrelevant."
"I made my prediction based on my keys to the White House, which, unlike the polls, are snapshots and are used as predictors, and unlike the pundits, who have no scientific basis for their opinions, my keys to the White House tap into the structure of how American presidential elections really work as votes up or down based on the performance of the White House party," he said.
"That's why I virtually stood alone in 2016 against Nate Silver, against all the pollsters, all the pundits in predicting that Donald Trump would win," Lichtman said. "My predictions are merely non-partisan."
Lichtman makes his prediction based on 13 keys, which he defines are based on analysis of every presidential election dating back to "the horse and buggy days" of 1860. He said last week that Harris won eight keys to Trump's five this year.
"Only two keys have anything to do with the candidates," Lichtman said. "And they're very high threshold keys, asking if the candidates are those once-in-a-generation, broadly inspirational, transformational candidates like Franklin Roosevelt on the Democratic side and Ronald Reagan on the Republican side."
The only election that Lichtman got wrong was the 2000 race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which came down to a Supreme Court ruling on the recount in Florida one month after the election.
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