Battle of the pollsters: ‘Nostradamus’ bashes rival after both election predictions flopped

Across the board, pollsters failed to predict Trump would win by a comfortable margin

With Donald Trump heading back to the White House, it’s not just the Democrats who face a reckoning, but pollsters as well.

Multiple high-profile polling gurus failed to accurately predict what ended up being a decisive victory for the former president on Tuesday, and now some of the experts are taking pot-shots at each other.

Political pollster and historian Allan Lichtman took a swipe at fellow elections forecaster Nate Silver on Wednesday, saying that ‘unlike his rival’ he will admit he was wrong about the 2024 result.

Allan Lichtman, a historian and election predictor, said Kamala Harris would win the election – only the second time he has been wrong about a presidential election since 1984 (AFP via Getty Images)

Lichtman is known as the “Nostradamus” of election predictions after accurately predicting nine of the 10 presidential elections between 1984 and 2020 using a technique he calls ‘the 13 keys’. However he, and many other pollsters, incorrectly claimed Kamala Harris would defeat Trump.

While admitting his errors, Lichman insulted Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight, for also incorrectly predicting the election would be extremely close and Harris was narrowly in the lead.

“Unlike Nate Silver, who will try to squirm out of why he didn’t see the election coming, I admit that I was wrong,” Lichtman wrote on X.

Silver predicted the election would be “a coin toss” between Harris and Donald Trump but his final prediction had the vice president at an extremely small margin ahead. However, he said his gut feeling was that Trump would win in a New York Times op-ed.

“Silver’s last call had Harris very marginally ahead. He certainly was not predicting a Trump Electoral College landslide,” Lichtman wrote on X. “And he said don’t trust my gut. So once again he can’t be wrong no matter what the outcome.”

Silver has not yet publicly responded to Lichtman’s comment.

The two pollsters use very different methods to make their predictions. Political historian Lichtman’s technique revolves around 13 tests - or “keys” - yes or no questions including whether the economy is in good shape and whether there has been sustained social unrest or scandal during the term. He ignores public opinion polls and day-to-day events.

Silver, by contrast, is a statistician who builds mathematical prediction models using polling, economic data and expected voter turnout.

Nate Silver, a statistician who founded FiveThirtyEight, said the election was too close to determine a winner – but election night told a different story (Getty Images for AWXII)

Ultimately though they were both, along with other pollsters, unable to predict the 2024 result.

Polling from the New York Times and Siena College, FiveThirtyEight, RealClearPolitics, Emerson College, Reuters, Ipsos and more all showed Harris marginally leading or tied with Trump.

The former president carried battleground states like Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with enough votes that the Associated Press called the election for Trump by 6 a.m. on Wednesday.