A historian who has correctly predicted nine of the last 10 general election results has shared his thoughts on how Donald Trump’s conviction could affect the results.
American University’s Dr. Allan Lichtman has yet to make his final prediction for Trump’s rematch with Joe Biden in November.
But the oracle of the popular vote has shared his theory on how the 34 guilty verdicts in the secret money case have impacted the state of the race.
Although he believes the full impact of the Manhattan trial won’t be known until the summer, there are already signs that show how it is affecting Trump’s chances.
American University historian Dr. Alan Lichtman isn’t making predictions for 2024 yet, but he says a lot would have to go wrong for President Joe Biden to lose reelection in November.
He said Trump’s 34 felony convictions are not likely to affect the 2024 election.
Many things would have to go wrong for the president Joe Biden Losing to Trump as things currently stand, Lichtman says, but he’s not making any final projections yet.
“We don’t know how this might affect moderate and undecided independent voters,” Lichtman told Fox News Digital. “So we really have to look over time and not rely on instant, unreliable experts.”
Trump also faces three other criminal trials. And Biden is plagued with legal problems from his son Hunter after he was convicted of three felonies related to firearm purchases in 2018.
“We won’t know much until the sentencing hearing on July 11, just before the Republican convention,” he said.
The jury in the Manhattan hush money trial returned a verdict on May 30 finding Trump guilty of 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records to keep porn star Stormy Daniels quiet before the 2016 election. about their adventure from a decade earlier.
The former president virtually completed his pre-sentencing interview this week, and sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention, where the Republican Party will nominate Trump as its candidate.
Lichtman has not yet made a final projection for the 2024 election, stating that the state of the race is still in flux.
The historian relies on a formula that he developed together with the mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok analyzing elections dating back to 1860. With it he has been able to correctly predict the result of nine presidential elections since 1984.
Using 13 so-called “key” questions, Lichtman keeps his personal preferences out of his predictions and was one of the few able to correctly predict that Trump would prevail in 2016, when polls and political commentators favored Democrat Hillary Clinton.
He was also correct in predicting that President Barack Obama would win reelection when Republican Mitt Romeny was the favorite and called for Biden in the 2020 election.
“We don’t reconceptualize presidential elections as Carter versus Reagan, Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative, but in geophysical terms,” Lichtman explained. ‘Stability: The party in the White House maintains power. Earthquake: the party at the White House is gone.
Speculating, the historian said that Trump’s guilty verdict does not appear to have affected his base.
Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts in his hush money trial in New York last month, but Lichtman says it doesn’t seem to affect his base so far heading into the 2024 election.
Meanwhile, Hunter, President Joe Biden’s son, was found guilty Tuesday of three felonies related to his 2018 firearms purchase.
Lichtman’s keys are based on simple true or false questions related to the party’s mandate, the race, the exercise of office, third parties, the short-term economy, the long-term economy, policy change, social unrest , scandal, military/foreign failure, military/foreign success, charisma of the incumbent and charisma of the challenger.
“The keys are an alternative to surveys, which are not predictive,” he continued. “They are snapshots, they are abused, they are not used as predictors”
And the experts, you know, who are very funny, but they talk about sports on the radio. “They have no scientific basis for their predictions,” Lichtman said.
He says Biden has lost two of his “keys” so far: the mandate key based on the midterm elections after Democrats lost two seats in 20222 and the so-called charisma key.
“He misses the key to charisma because he’s not Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy,” Lichtman said of Biden.
If a candidate misses six of Lichtman’s keys, he or she is likely to lose the presidential election, according to the algorithm.