Renowned history teacher Allan Lichtman caused a stir when he predicted that Vice President Kamala Harris would be the 47th President of the United States.

His prediction flew in the face of recent polls, betting markets, low approval ratings for President Biden and the obvious challenges of fielding a new candidate three months after the election. It was hard to believe that Lichtman was right, but he had been right so many times before, correctly predicting 9 out of 10 of the last election.

Lichtman’s Predictive System, developed together with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981it involves 13 so-called keys, including “party mandate”, “incumbency” and “no social unrest”. According to Lichtman, if eight or more keys are present, the party’s incumbent wins the election.

Lichtman thought Harris had met the required eight keys, but then lost — and in resounding fashion. After the election results, which Lichtman described as “unfathomable”, he he concluded that misinformation explained the epic failure of his predictive system.

I don’t deny the enormous influence of disinformation, but we know that torrents of fake news have similarly influenced the last two elections, which he rightly predicted.

With all due respect to Lichtman, I think I’ve found his missing key.

I think Lichtman’s missing key is gender bias. All past elections he has correctly predicted have been won by men. He rightly predicted Trump would prevail against Hillary Clinton. This year was the first time Lichtman bet on a woman. And he was missing a deeply relevant, if extremely discouraging, fact: that many Americans simply aren’t interested in voting for a woman.

Let’s take a look at the facts.

trump card he doubled his vote share from black men compared to four years ago. Harris lost about 10 points among Latino men compared to Biden, falling from 60% in 2020 to 50% this time. While there’s no doubt that concerns about abortion, inflation and immigration have been on voters’ minds this season, this sizable shift in the male vote also suggests a shift in Trump’s relative appeal when running against a woman.

To better understand this invisible but important force in world politics, consider a 2020 UN survey that found almost 90 percent of all people worldwide are biased against women. Half of people think men make better political leaders. The latest World Values ​​Survey showed that 16% of American men agreed that “Men are generally better political leaders than women.” Although this is considerably lower than the UN’s global measure of bias, it is important to remember that such surveys only capture the bias that the respondent is aware of and willing to admit; rates of implicit or unconscious bias are likely much higher and much more difficult to track.

Either way, 16 percent of the population would be more than enough to swing the battleground states that determine US elections.

We’d be naive to think that the fact that Harris is a woman, let alone a black, biracial woman, didn’t factor into the minds of the thousands of voters, male and female, who turned out in surprising numbers for Trump in these election — especially given that Trump has now won against two eminently qualified female candidates and only lost to Joe Biden.

The pattern here is not insignificant. After all, there’s a reason we’ve yet to swear in a woman president in our nearly 250-year history as Americans.

I think Lichtman’s system, which was adapted to about 130 years of male-dominated politics, was not adjusted to account for gender bias. He believed the old rules still applied. And the fact that he correctly predicted Trump’s victory over Clinton most likely suggested to Lichtman that his system still works, even with a woman in the mix. But his prediction in favor of the woman candidate is totally different, because this time the 14th key of misogyny and sexism worked against him rather than for him.

If Lichtman had added a 14th key for “no female nominee” and required nine total positive keys for an early win, Harris would have come up short, as he actually did. The fact that a woman should satisfy one or more other keys than a man it would not surprise countless women who have long experienced the need to work harder for the same promotions as their male colleagues.

There will be countless theories about which of the many social, political and economic forces pushed the nation to vote overwhelmingly for Trump. Much of this will also be useful and relevant, and I will not deny the sheer complexity of this or any election. Still, at the end of the day, we have to face the fact that a sitting vice president, a former attorney general, a prosecutor, and a really decent woman lost to a twice convicted male offender which was found responsible for sexual assault and who tried openly subvert and deny the results of the last elections.

I don’t think economic or political considerations alone explain Harris’ loss, given Trump’s age, clear moral failings, criminal rap sheet, and fascist intentions. Many Americans just don’t like Trump, but still found him more likable than voting for a woman. Alan Lichtman’s system was calibrated for elections with two opposing men. But this election was different, and as much as we may not like to admit it, it’s time to add a 14th key.

Greg Wolff is a freelance writer of essays, poetry, and fiction.

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