Allan Lichtman vs. Nate Silver: Whose US presidential election model can predict correctly? Experts weigh in

The rivalry between US top election forecasters Allan Lichtman and Nate Silver will soon be put to the test as voters are set to cast their ballot on 5 November and political pundits will gauge who might win the presidency.

Professor Lichtman of American University, who has accurately anticipated nine of the previous presidential polls, has projected that Vice President Kamala Harris will win the 2024 White House race.

What are Lichtman and Silver's forecasting methods

In a recent article in the New York Times, Silver, the pollster and statistician who developed FiveThirtyEight, stated that although the race is virtually even, he has a “gut” feeling that former President Donald Trump will win.

Both the election forecasters have disputed over the merits of their different methods.

Hitting out at Lichtman, Silver asked if he was accurately evaluating the “13 keys” he employs to predict election outcomes in September, claiming that the professor's method really worked to Trump's advantage. Lichtman clapped back, stating that Silver, who has an economics degree, was “not a historian or a political scientist” and had made incorrect predictions in the past.

“At least 7 of the keys, maybe 8, clearly favor Trump. Sorry brother, but that's what the keys say. Unless you're admitting they're totally arbitrary?” Silver wrote on social media.

According to Lichtman, Harris is favored by at least eight of the keys in 2024. However, Silver looks at the outcome of the election using a very different approach and set of data.

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Allan Lichtman vs Nate Silver: A look at their prediction records

In the ten US elections since 1984, Lichtman has accurately forecast the results of nine of them. However, the one he predicted wrong was the Al Gore vs George W. Bush battle. Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush.

On the other hand, Silver became well-known across the country in 2008 after his statistical model accurately predicted the results of 49 out of 50 states' presidential elections. Since then, the results of the presidential elections in 2012 and 2020 have been anticipated by his model. In the 2016 election, Silver's model predicted that Hillary Clinton would win, but it gave Trump a chance of about 30%, which was far greater than most other forecasters.

HT in US: Special Coverage of the American elections by Prashant Jha

Here's what experts have to say about accurate prediction

Both Silver and Lichtman's approaches are “wrong in different ways,” according to Thomas Miller, director of Northwestern University's data science school. Miller developed his own election forecasting algorithm, utilising data from the betting market Predict It and 60 years of historical analysis.

He claimed that Lichtman's model doesn't take into considerationthe waycampaign messaging and significant events alter public opinion in the closing months of an election, USA TODAY reported.

Miller alsoidentified shortcomings in Silver's strategy, including that he placed an excessive amount of reliance on polling data, which is inconsistent and subject to error. Silver will make erroneous predictions if the polls are wrong.

Despite the variation, Cook Political Report elections analyst David Wasserman said he believed Silver's strategy was “methodologically more rigorous.”

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