Allan Lichtman, the pollster dubbed the “Nostradamus of presidential predictions”, has delivered his verdict on last night’s vice presidential debate.
Speaking on a YouTube livestream, the 77-year-old described JD Vance as “very personable” and “slick” but concluded Tim Walz “finally found his voice” on a key issue, which then tipped the debate in the Democrat’s favor.
Lichtman, who has correctly predicted the result of nine out of 10 presidential elections since 1984, said that Walz came into his own when the moderators questioned the candidates about abortion.
“I thought it was kind of bipolar debate,” he said.
“The first 20 minutes I thought Vance had a slight edge… Walz looked a little bit nervous, he looked a little bit rattled even on a couple of issues that should have been very good for Democrats.
“But there was then a tipping point in this debate, a trigger, and that’s when they got to reproductive freedom. Finally, Tim Walz found his voice and was very persuasive and very eloquent about reproductive freedom for women,” Lichtman said.
By contrast, he said that he “couldn’t fathom” what Vance’s position on the issue was.
The historian graded Vance a C minus and awarded Walz a B for their debate performances, though he found Walz’s running mate Kamala Harris to be more impressive in the debate against Donald Trump on September 10.
“It wasn’t a wipeout like I thought Harris had wiped out Trump,” he said.
Lichtman has already called November’s election for Harris in a video for The New York Times last month. “At least, that’s my prediction for this race, but the outcome is up to you, so get out and vote,” he said.
Lichtman’s method for forecasting the race is known as “The Keys to the White House”, a system he devised with the Russian academic Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981.
The method examines the state of the nation and the incumbent party in an election year in order to determine whether its candidate will come out on top once again in November or whether there is sufficient discontent among voters to allow a rival to pip them to the post.
Lichtman’s approach looks at 13 factors, from the presidential party’s standing in the House of Representatives to the health of the domestic economy, any record of scandal, social unrest or foreign policy disasters during their tenure and the comparative charisma of the two candidates, in order to decide the victor, applying “true” or “false” designations to each category.
If the administration in power achieves six or more “true” gradings, its candidate is expected to win – any fewer and their challenger is likely to come out on top.
In his explanatory video for the NYT, the professor said that eight of the 13 keys currently yield “true” answers, suggesting a Harris triumph and another four years in power for the Democrats.
The professor, who has taught at the American University in Washington DC since 1973, has an impressive track record but he did not foresee George W Bush narrowly beating Al Gore in 2000 and also wrongly believed Trump would take the popular vote in 2016.
Other than those, he has correctly predicted the result of nine out of 10 presidential elections since 1984.