Historian who correctly predicted every election since 1984 makes his call

so our next guest has correctly predicted the outcome of every presidential race since 1984. historian alan lichtman was one of the only election forecasters who predicted that donald trump would win the white house back in 2016. president trump even sent him a note of congratulations on a copy of the washington post article about his prediction joining me now with this forecast for 2020 alan lichtman distinguished professor of history at american university professor thank

you very much for being here uh so i’m sure everybody would like to know what your prediction is this time around and and how you arrived at your prediction right my totally nonpartisan system generates predictions not endorsements and the way it works is it’s called the 13 keys to the white house and it gauges the strength and performance of the party holding the white house trump of course right now and that means that it is governance not campaigning that counts imagine that and the way the system works if six or more keys go against the white house party they are predicted losers any six that’s how i was able to predict trump in 2016 because the democrats had exactly six keys out against him

however this time i have a different prediction now that trump is the incumbent he has seven keys out against him and my prediction is that donald trump will become the first sitting president since George h.w bush in 1992 to lose a re-election bid and joe biden will become the next president of the united states so you just taking a look at those keys if we can put them back up i don’t know if we’ll have time to get through all of them but which ones stand out to you as sort of the most important of these keys and can you explain what’s underlying them, yes the keys that stand out most important are the ones that only turned in 2020 after the pandemic and the cries for social and racial justice going into 2020 Donald trump was looking great with only four keys down but then we had the pandemic which never got resolved and the call

for social and racial justice which never got resolved and cost trump three more keys the short-term economic key measured by an election-year recession the long-term economic key because despite the spike in the third quarter on a much lower base growth is still negative and pushes down the average and of course the social unrest key because of what’s raging across the land and remains unresolved so trump goes from four keys down to seven keys down never in the history of the united states martha has the party holding the wise white house ever suffered such a sudden and dramatic reversal of fortune in just a few months yeah you know it’s an interesting question because it the things that you point to almost are in some ways out of the president any president’s control they’re the kind of things that happen to

presidents happen during their tenure and of course how they respond to them is is one of the the key measures but i just wonder you know when you look back in history at other times when things you know became become so overwhelming to the office that perhaps it’s there’s not that much that a president can do to to change those keys well herbert hoover a

man who should know said very patiently when you have the president you get the credit for the sunshine and the blame for the rain it’s raining pretty hard on america right now i think that is raining pretty hard alan thank you very much alan lichtman interesting to hear your perspective and we’ll see if you’re right or if this is the first time that you’re wrong and we’ll talk after the election thank you sir