Polling expert who has correctly called US elections for 40 years says Kamala Harris will win in November

Allan Lichtman, the American political historian known as the “Nostradamus of presidential predictions”, has officially declared that Kamala Harris will win this year’s race for the White House.

“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States,” Lichtman said in a video for The New York Times on Thursday.

“At least, that’s my prediction for this race, but the outcome is up to you, so get out and vote.”

The professor, who has taught at the American University in Washington DC since 1973, has correctly called the winner of nine out of the last 10 US presidential races over the last 40 years – he did not foresee George W Bush narrowly beating Al Gore in 2000 and also wrongly believed Donald Trump would take the popular vote in 2016 but has otherwise been unerring.

Lichtman’s method for forecasting the race so accurately is known as “The Keys to the White House”, a system he devised with the Russian academic Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981.

Their method examines the state of the nation and the incumbent party in an election year in order to determine whether its candidate will come out on top once again in November or whether there is sufficient discontent among voters to allow a rival to pip them at the post.

Lichtman’s approach looks at 13 factors, from the president’s party’s standing in the House of Representatives to the health of the domestic economy, any record of scandal, social unrest or foreign policy disasters during their tenure and the comparative charisma of the two candidates, in order to decide the victor, applying “true” or “false” designations to each category.

If the administration in power achieves six or more “true” gradings, its candidate is expected to win – any fewer and their challenger