Allan Lichtman, a star historian who predicted Donald Trump’s electoral victory in 2016, a lone voice in a torrent of surveys forecasting the opposite, made headlines with his new prophecy that Trump will lose on Nov. 3, 2020. But in my interview with Lichtman a few days ago, the historian surprised me with other bold predictions.
Lichtman, proud of having correctly predicted the winner of every U.S. presidential election since 1984, said that it is also highly likely that the Democrats regain control of the Senate.
The political sage does not pay attention to polls. Rather, he created a method that follows 13 economic trends. The candidate who leads in the majority of these trends is the predicted winner.
When I asked him if anything could happen between now and election day that would change his forecast, he responded that neither the debates nor Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate will make a difference.
Trump’s strategy to paint Biden as a socialist will not work, Lichman asserted. Biden is a moderate and his record as such is decades long.
On the other hand, Trump’s disastrous management of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic crisis, recurrent scandals and growing racial unrest in the country will shift the majority of the 13 trends against the president, according to Lichtman.
I asked him what would happen if he is wrong and Trump wins. It would be “very dangerous for the country,” Lichtman said. “If Trump wins again, I fear for the future of democracy in the United States.”*
Still, what most piqued my interest during the interview was Lichtman’s concern that Trump could attempt to manipulate the election by suppressing minority votes or discrediting mail-in votes. According to a recent ABC News-Washington Post survey, Democrats are over two times more likely to vote by mail than Republicans, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump is trying to “discredit voting by mail, and he may even be trying to prevent the postal service from maintaining its capacity to deliver ballots,” Lichtman said.*
The historian predicts that it will be difficult for Trump to stay in the White House while claiming fraud, if he loses. If there is a constitutional crisis, “the Secret Service will escort him out of the White House. His mandate ends, according to the Constitution, on Jan. 20, and there’s nothing he can do to change that,” Lichtman affirmed.
Personally, I am not bold enough to predict that Trump will lose. Much can happen between now and then. But I do agree that if Trump tries to manipulate the election to avoid defeat, it is likely that U.S. institutions will prevail.
Why am I optimistic? Because both the Supreme Court and the U.S. armed forces have recently sent subtle, but clear, messages to Trump that they will not allow him to usurp their powers.
Editor’s Note: The Lichtman quotations, although accurately translated could not be verified.
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