Comparison Between 2024 Forecasts and Actual Results
With the final tally for the US Presidential Election 2024 now in, let’s check the accuracy of my pre-election forecasts published online on October 13, 2024 in “Why Trump Wins the Presidency! A Christian Futurist Forecasts a Crushing Defeat for the Democratic Party” (1) and shared on X, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Interestingly, most forecasters and pundits got their 2024 US Presidential Election predictions wrong. This includes the most successful-ever predictor of US election results, namely Professor Allan Lichtman, whose famous 13 Keys to the White House model predicted a victory for VP Harris.
Here’s a comparison between my forecasts (on left) in October and the actual results (on right):
Predicted electoral seats for Trump = 310 Actual Result = 312
Predicted electoral seats for Harris = 228 Actual Result = 226
Predicated Popular Vote for Trump = 53% Actual Result = 50.4%
Predicated Popular Vote for Harris = 47% Actual Result = 48%
Figure 1: Comparison Between Predicted Results and Actual Results for 2024 US Presidential Election
In addition, I predicted Trump would win the states of Texas and Florida, along with 6 of the 7 identified battleground swing states. This prediction, too, was accurate, except that Donald Trump won all 7 swing states, making it a clean sweep.
Summary
In summary, it was a privilege to get the scale of the historic victory for Donald Trump in 2024 correct with a comparatively high degree of accuracy. The flipside of the coin is that the “crushing defeat” for the Democratic Party I stated in the subtitle of my essay did, indeed, come to pass.
The fact is the Trump/Vance ticket was on the right side of history and they were on top of all the major election issues. By contrast, the Democratic Party simply imploded and now face a problematical future due to their recent history of greed, complacency, incompetence, internal division and failed domestic and foreign affairs policies.
These close-to-reality 2024 forecasts mark my third consecutive correct set of predictions for the outcome of US Presidential elections. In 2016, in my blog “Preparing for a Pax Trumpicana”, dated 3 August 2016, I gave Trump a 60% chance of victory, arguing that Trump would ride a wave of populism sweeping through the West, with its roots in the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 and the subsequent Great Recession (https://www.infideas.com/preparing-pax-trumpicana). In 2020, in my blog “Why a Millennial-Dominated America Could Shred Donald Trump in the November 2020 Presidential Elections”, dated Oct 2, 2020, I recorded a 55% probability for a decisive and comfortable victory for Biden, as well as a 55% likelihood that Trump would resist a peaceful, constitutional handover of power (https://michaeljlee.com/why-a-millennial-dominated-america-could-shred-donald-trump).
If Ian Fleming was right in Goldfinger when he wrote, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”, then three successful predictions in 2016, 2020 and 2024, respectively, probably point towards a solid underlying forecast model, mostly free of thumb-sucking speculations.
Finally, it’s very rewarding that my weighted forecast model, “The 7 Deciders for Winning the US Presidential Election” (2) easily outperformed Professor Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys to the White House model in the 2024 election. If Professor Lichtman got it so wrong in 2024, is this the end of the road for his highly respected model in its current configuration?
End Notes
(1) See https://michaeljlee.com/why-trump-wins-the-presidency-a-christian-futurist-forecasts-a-crushing-defeat-for-the-democratic-party/
(2) See Appendix 1 at https://michaeljlee.com/why-trump-wins-the-presidency-a-christian-futurist-forecasts-a-crushing-defeat-for-the-democratic-party/