A Stony Brook professor’s “Primary Model,” which has accurately predicted five out of six elections since 1996, indicates that President Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.
Helmut Norpoth told Mediaite that his model gives Trump a 91% chance of winning reelection.
He said his model would have predicted the winner of all but two presidential elections that took place in the last 108 years.
“This model gets it right for 25 of the 27 elections since 1912, when primaries were introduced,” he said.
The model was wrong in guessing the winner for President John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 and President George W. Bush’s election in 2000. In 2000, Bush won a majority of the electoral college but lost the popular vote.
Norpoth’s model also predicts that Trump will win more electoral votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. The model predicts he will win 362 in November. He won 304 in 2016.
The model determines a candidate’s chance of winning based on their success in early presidential nominating contests. That calculation places Biden at a disadvantage because of losses he suffered during the Democrat Party's first two presidential nominating contests. He placed fourth in Iowa’s caucus and fifth in the New Hampshire primary.
The only candidate to secure a Democrat nomination for president after losing Iowa and New Hampshire is former President Bill Clinton, according to Mediaite.
Norpoth said his model also ignores public opinion surveys.
“The terrain of presidential contests is littered with nominees who saw a poll lead in the spring turn to dust in the fall,” Norpoth said. “The list is long and discouraging for early frontrunners. Beginning with Thomas Dewey in 1948, it spans such notables as Richard Nixon in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Michael Dukakis in 1988, George H.W. Bush in 1992, and John Kerry in 2004, to cite just the most spectacular cases.”
Most surveys indicate Trump is trailing behind Biden. Norpoth said his model predicted Trump’s 2016 victory because it didn’t rely on opinion polls that showed Hillary Clinton leading.
“Polls and poll-based forecasts all handed Hillary Clinton a certain victory,” he said.