Politics

WATCH: ‘Election Guru’ Allan Lichtman Blames Failed Prediction On ‘Disinformation,’ Elon Musk

Published

1 week ago

November 13, 2024

Liberal historian Allan Lichtman, who claims to have predicted the last several presidential elections through his ill-defined “13 keys,” has been blaming “disinformation” and X owner Elon Musk after his 2024 Election prediction was wildly off-base.

Under his “13 keys,” Lichtman grades the major presidential parties on a number of metrics, including overall health of the economy, scandals or lack thereof, and charisma. The historian had projected that Vice President Kamala Harris would cruise to the White House last Tuesday, going so far as to predict wins for Harris in Georgia and North Carolina.

(VOTE: Should JD Vance Run For President In 2028?)

Lichtman was visibly frustrated while watching the results in a livestream with his son, as he continually attempted to reassure himself that Harris had a chance as the results continuously painted a different picture. He opted not to go live in the days following the election, telling followers that he was wrong and would soon be offering an assessment on how that happened.

He soon emerged on CNN, where Lichtman blamed the rise of “disinformation” and X owner Elon Musk for his failed prediction.

“The keys depend on a rational, pragmatic electorate deciding based on governance whether the incumbent party should get four more years, and we’ve seen the explosion of some trends that have existed before but not to this extent,” Lichtman told CNN’s Laura Coates.

“Disinformation, you know, Elon Musk is a, I don’t know how many hundreds of billions he has, he has been the director of misinformation. Two billion views of his spreading of disinformation. Not just about the economy, but about immigrants, about minorities,” he continued. “We’ve never seen disinformation at this scale. Next, we have never seen to this scale the agitation of three trends that have been very deeply embedded in American history. Misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. You know, the first anti-immigrant law was 1798 and Donald Trump wants to revive it.”

Lichtman ignored backlash to his comments and doubled down and took things a step further during an appearance on News Nation Wednesday.

“Yes, as I said, things could go wrong. There could be unprecedented events that change the pattern of 160 years of history. That’s what happened here. Two things,” the American University professor said when asked about his failed prediction by host Chris Cuomo. He went on to blame his inaccuracy on two things, the first of them being “disinformation.”

“We’ve always had disinformation, but disinformation has exploded to an unprecedented degreeYou talked about a grievance election, but a lot of that grievance was driven by disinformation. Starts with Fox News and conservative media, conservative podcasters with tens of millions of views,” Lichtman ranted.

“But we’ve seen something brand new this time. The 300 billionaire Elon Musk putting his thumb on the scales through his control of X, formerly Twitter. It’s been reported that his misinformation has had billions, literally billions of views and this is spread to every aspect of this election. There is misinformation about everything about the economy, inflation, jobs, unemployment, the stock market, growth. There is vast disinformation about undocumented immigrants, you know, that they are supposedly, killer.”

Lichtman’s “13 Keys,” as well as his election track record, were under scrutiny long before Election Day due to their subjective applications. He gave Vice President Harris positive grades for the short-term and long-term economic outlook, both of which widely deviated from months of polling data. He also gave the Biden-Harris Administration the nod for foreign policy success, said they were not bogged down by any scandals and labeled President-elect Donald Trump as an “uncharismatic challenger.”