Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? Ahead of the highly-anticipated 2024 US Presidential Elections, Allan Lichtman – historian, author, and a rare political forecaster with a track record of poll predictions – caught up with NDTV to share his thoughts. 

Mr Lichtman dismissed the relevance of most polling data, saying that they are as arbitrary as “superstition” in the words of the popular philosopher David Hume. 

“Consign them (opinion polls) to the flames,” Mr Lichtman told NDTV. “They have no predictive value. And they are all well within the margin of error. In 2016. When I predicted Donald Trump which did not make me very popular in the 90 per cent democratic Washington DC, where I teach at American University. All of the polls were going in the other direction. In fact, the most eminent compiler of polls, the Princeton University Consortium, gave Hillary Clinton a 99 per cent chance of winning.”

Mr Lichtman’s prediction model focuses on historical patterns, dismissing the idea that polls, campaign strategies, or even election demographics alone can determine outcomes. In 1981, he developed the 13 “Keys to the White House” system, identifying that governance, not campaign tactics, decides the US elections. His model has correctly forecasted the winner of every election since 1984, including some when his conclusions contradicted popular sentiment.

“Yes, we are going to have Kamala Harris, a new path-breaking president, the first woman president and the first president of mixed African and Asian descent. It is kind of foreshadowing where America is going. We are rapidly becoming a majority-minority country old white guys like me, we are on the decline,” Mr Lichtman said.

While demographics do not dictate his model’s predictions, Mr Lichtman did acknowledge the demographic trends against which Republicans are increasingly struggling. According to Mr Lichtman, Republicans’ efforts to limit minority votes through voter suppression tactics reflect a party trying to secure a dwindling base in the face of these shifts. 

“I don’t base my prediction on voter demographics. You cannot accurately predict an election by trying to break it down into individual voter groups. I use the teacup analogy. You pour sugar into it. You learn nothing by trying to follow the individual sugar molecules, but you can learn a lot from simple, integral parameters like sweetness and density. And that is what the keys are all about,” Mr Lichtman told NDTV. 

Despite acknowledging the possibility of error, Mr Lichtman said his predictions are definitive, and not hedged by probabilities. Mr Lichtman has been right every election since Ronald Reagan, even going back retrospectively to the 1860 election that brought Abraham Lincoln to power. 

“Could I be wrong? Of course, I am a human being. Any human being can be wrong. It’s always possible,” he said. 

When asked if his model could be applied to elections in India, Mr Lichtman said that while the methodology could inspire similar predictive frameworks, it cannot be directly transplanted.

“I love India. I have been there lecturing about the keys to the White House, and I have been asked whether the keys could apply to Indian elections. And my answer is you cannot just export the keys. But someone who knows a lot about Indian history and politics could use the methodology and insights of the keys to become the Alan Lichtman of India,” he said.