[NYP] A professor who has accurately predicted the winner of eight of the last nine presidential elections says 2020 is still officially "too close to call.""This is a very close and very difficult call. I don’t think either the Democrats or the Republicans should be sending up any victory flags at this point," Allan J. Lichtman, a political historian at American University, told The Post. "Too much is still up in the air and in the age of Trump, things can change very quickly."
Lichtman, 72, has become a cult figure in American politics for developing a set of 13 criteria which he has used to make his prediction. Metrics include things like scandal, foreign military failure and social unrest. The theory is laid out in his 1996 book "The Keys to the White House." The system was able to predict Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection back in 1982 ‐ during a recession.
(In 2000, he predicted Al Gore would win the popular vote, though tripped up on the ultimate outcome of the electoral college. Something he still doesn’t accept. "2000 was a stolen election," he says.)