Prominent Election Forecasters Allan Lichtman and Nate Silver Clash Over Predicting Election Outcomes

If you think the 2024 election campaign saw a great deal of hostility, it was nothing compared to what has come since as far as the mutual attacks being made against one another by History Professor Alan Lichtman and famed pollster Nate Silver. This new feud erupted after Lichtman, who some call the elections “Nostradamus” who has successfully predicted the outcome of almost all of the U.S. presidential elections over the past 40 years, got it wrong this year and picked Vice-President Kamal Harris to win.

Alan Lichtman explained his mistaken prediction away by placing the blame on Nate Silver, the famed statistician and founder of the political predictions and observations website FiveThirtyEight, who predicted a Kamala Harris victory.

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

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“Unlike Nate Silver, who will try to squirm out of why he didn’t see the election coming, I admit that I was wrong. I will assess the election and the keys on my live show this Thursday at 9 PM Eastern,” added Lichtman.

Before the first polls opened on Tuesday, Nate Silver tweeted, “It might literally wind up in the range where who’s “ahead” in our final forecast is determined by luck. There’s still a little bit of variance introduced by running “only” 40,000 simulations (we’ll run 80,000 tonight but still…).”

In August, Silver wrote that Harris had opened a “strong” lead over Trump.

This is not the first time that Alan Lichtman and Nate Silver have traded barbs.

In September, Lichtman wrote, “Nate. you don’t have the faintest idea about how to apply my keys. You are neither a historian or a political scientist or have any academic credentials of any kind.”

To that, Silver responded, “Lichtman is comically overconfident and doesn’t own up to the subjectivities in his method, but you’ll legit learn a lot about presidential elections by reading his work, and he’s at least putting himself out there making testable predictions.”

As of now, Nate Silver has not responded to Alan Lichtman’s comments.