Is Allan Lichtman's Prediction System Obsolete, Or Is Allan Lichtman?

Watching Cenk Uygur tell Allan Lichtman he "need[ed] a tall glass of shut up juice" was probably one of the funniest moments of the post-election meltdowns. Or perhaps, that title belongs to Licthman's most narcissistic moment of all time, when he called Uygur a "blasphemer" for questioning his (false) prophecy.

It's easy to Monday morning quarterback, but it was quite obvious from the moment Allan Lichtman announced his final prediction that he was either misapplying his own prediction system - either that, or his Stage 4 Trump Derangement System turned Stage 5 Fatal.

According to Lichtman himself, there were already 4 keys that were turned against Harris, and many argue that it was far more than 4, hence his major mis-prediction. But it only takes 6 keys to turn against the incumbent party to hand the election over to the challenger. There were two very simple and obvious keys turned that Lichtman misapplied (which of course begs the obvious follow-up question: Is Lichtman's prediction system obsolete, or is it Lichtman himself who is obsolete?).

We're going to ignore all the (perhaps accurate) criticisms of Lichtman from others in the media, who've been questioning quite a few of the keys on this list, claiming in some cases, that actually as many as 10 keys or more that were turned against the 2024 incumbent party.

But we don't need 10.... we only need 6. And there were objectively - by any intellectually honest measurement - 6 keys turned against the incumbent party.

The first one is obvious, and one Lichtman as a "political scientist" (cough-cough) should've easily been able to call, and the fact that he didn't is wholly unacceptable, and deserving of criticism.

Lichtman claims that Key 11, a major foreign/military success, was true, and a key turned in favor of the incumbent party. His justification of this was the Ukraine war. This is an absurd assertion, as no intellectually honest individual can pretend that this was a success. To this day, weeks after the election, no serious person has any idea what part of the Ukraine war he's claiming was successful. This was obviously no success for our own military, because our military isn't fighting in the war (at least according to the mainstream media, despite the Pentagon confirming that there are in fact some soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to "inspect weapons deliveries"). But even to claim this was a "foreign success" is an absurd claim, as the only thing that was "successful" that came from the U.S.'s intervening in this foreign conflict was the prolonging of violence (which was seemingly the DoD's modus operandi; because of course, how else would their good buddies over at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon be able to score those sweet profits from their new arms deals client, Vladdy Z.?). And as the body count still continues to stack up to this very day, Allan Lichtman, for God only knows what reason, considers the war in Ukraine to be some big success. This was by any objective measure, a key turned against the incumbent party, not in favor of it.

So now, we're already at 5 keys turned against the incumbent party - and 4 big Lichtman's own admission. We only need one more to swing the election, and for Lichtman's prediction system to have accurately done its job.

Now, this next key takes a little more guile to make sense of, but the brilliant political science genius Allan Lichtman, who created this prediction system, should've been able to figure it out. Again, his inability to see the obvious is wholly unacceptable.

The 13th key says not one, but two different things - and theoretically, both parts of the key must be analyzed to apply it properly. For the 13th key to be turned in the incumbent party's favor, the challenging candidate must not be charismatic, measurable according to Allan Lichtman as a 60% or higher approval rating according to polling (another problem with Lichtman's theory, since he claims to hate polling so much, yet requires them to qualify/quantify and turn several of his keys), as well as not be a national hero. This is, in my opinion, the most glaring problem with Lichtman's application of the 13th key. I'd argue, and I believe a large portion of the American people would argue at this point, that Donald Trump did in fact become a national hero on July 13, 2024, when he survived an assassination attempt, and took a bullet to his right ear for his country. What makes someone a "national hero?" I'd argue fighting in a war would. Certainly, getting injured in a battle during a war would. We already give out prestigious awards to such soldiers called "purple hearts." So how could surviving an assassination attempt while running for president possibly not qualify one as a "national hero?" Allan Lichtman's failure to recognize the historical significance of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump was the second half of his failure to predict the 2024 presidential election. The 13th key was turned in the challenging party's favor, not the incumbent party's.



So, I'll pose the question again: Is Allan Lichtman's prediction system obsolete, or is it Allan Lichtman's who's obsolete? I'd argue that his prediction system did its job, and had it been applied correctly, it would have accurately predicted the 2024 election. It's Allan Lichtman who's obsolete, not The 13 Keys to the White House.