Historian who correctly predicted 9 of last 10 presidential elections picks Harris, still

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States and beat Republican rival Donald Trump on Election Day, or so historian and election forecaster Allan Lichtman still predicts.

Known for correctly predicting the results of the last nine out of 10 presidential elections, Lichtman said on his YouTube channel Tuesday night that his prediction has not changed, despite Democratic nominee Harris' leads in battleground states shrinking and polls being nail-bitingly close. Lichtman's lone incorrect prediction came in 2000 when he said Democrat Al Gore would win the White House.

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"Nothing has changed to change my prediction that I made on Sept. 5," Lichtman said, "in defiance of the polls."

Lichtman has come under fire for his predictions, notably with political pollster Nate Silver last month calling the American University modern history professor's keys "totally arbitrary" in a post on X.

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He emphasized Tuesday the 13 keys he uses to make his predictions have not changed and criticized the prevalence of polling in the media, saying that governing, rather than campaigning, is indicative of who will win the 2024 race for the White House.

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"I don't have a crystal ball, I'm not Speaker Mike Johnson who thinks he has a pipeline to the Almighty, my system is based on history, it's very robust, but it's always possible, you can't know it in advance that that there'd be something so cataclysmic and so unprecedented to break the pattern of history," Lichtman said, but that "doesn't mean my prediction is invalidated."

Lichtman's son Sam interviewed his father during the 90-minute live video, where the election prognosticator argued that democracy itself is at stake in this year's White House race.

Before every election, Lichtman said he gets butterflies, but this year is different.

"I have a flock of crows in my stomach," he said.

(This story has been updated with more information.)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Despite close polls, historian Allan Lichtman says Harris to win