President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race Sunday sent polling statistics and frontrunner theories back to square one.
So far this year, Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump had led President Biden in most polls, but after the Democrat dropped out of the race and backed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s new candidate, it remained to be seen how the new nominee would fare.
On Tuesday, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris now leading Trump 44% to 42%. The two had been tied in the outlet’s poll from the week prior, though that was before she officially entered the race.
And as other polling statistics continue to trickle in, political strategists and American voters alike are trying to evaluate the new state of the 2024 presidential race.
But is it still too early to tell how it will all play out? Not if you ask Allan Lichtman.
The historian and 51-year American University professor is the creator of a presidential election prediction system called “Keys to the White House,” which uses 13 true-false criteria to forecast the winning candidate. It’s helped Lichtman correctly predict 9 of the 10 most recent presidential elections.
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After President Biden’s shaky debate performance last month and calls for him to drop out of the race amplified, Lichtman told Scripps News the Democrats’ only chance of winning was if the commander-in-chief stayed in the running.
But on Tuesday, Lichtman told us that although the president stepping aside cost the party one of the “keys” — that being the incumbency key — he believes Democrats will “avoid disaster” by their coalescing around Harris as the likely nominee, thereby avoiding the loss of the contest key.
Lichtman said this now puts the Democrats down only three keys. They are party mandate — which he defines as the incumbent party holding more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives after midterm elections than before, which didn’t happen — incumbency, and incumbent charisma, which Lichtman said was a loss “because Harris is not an FDR.”
Lichtman told Scripps News for the incumbent to be counted out of the race, they would need to be down six total keys — meaning three more would have to fall.
“That can happen, but it’s not likely. So as a result of the Democrats retaining the contest key, I continue to say, a lot would have to go wrong for the Democrats to lose this election,” Lichtman said.
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The other keys a candidate can use to win in Lichtman’s model include:
- whether the incumbent sees a significant third-party candidate
- whether the economy is in recession
- long-term economic growth
- major policy change
- whether there is sustained social unrest during the campaign cycle
- being untainted by scandal
- suffering no foreign/military failure
- achieving foreign/military success
- whether the challenging party’s candidate is charismatic or a national hero
Because the keys largely depend on the incumbent’s actions, Lichtman claims it’s going to be a struggle for Trump to outpace Harris at any point. He says this is particularly apparent because she’s retained much of President Biden’s campaign team and structure — and his keys.
“Trump is in deep trouble. You don’t change keys. He has no influence over the keys that decide an election,” Lichtman said. “She has all the trappings of a strong administration. All the money goes to her. The donors are rallying to her. The delegates are rallying, and the rank-and-file voters seem to be rallying. And Trump has to totally recalibrate his campaign. ‘Dementia Joe’ is not going to fly with vigorous Harris here.”
Lichtman said his final prediction won’t come until August, after the Democratic National Convention. In part, he said this is because he’s waiting until then to decide on the social unrest key.
