Professor Helmut Norpoth, a political science professor at Stony Brook University, has come forward to admit that he believes Donald Trump has a 97% chance of winning the presidency. According to The Statesman, Norpoth created a statistical model of presidential elections that utilizes information such as the candidate’s performance during the primaries, as well as patterns in the electoral cycle. And while you and I may have doubts that Donald Trump will even get the Republican nomination (and are still dumbfounded that he’s made it this far), Norpoth seems fairly confident that against Hillary Clinton, Trump is the clear-cut winner:
“The bottom line is that the primary model, using also the cyclical movement, makes it almost certain that Donald Trump will be the next president,” Norpoth said, “if he’s a nominee of the [Republican] party.”(via)
Norpoth’s model reportedly works for every single presidential election that’s taken place since 1912, not including the 1960 election. Supposedly the model’s accuracy is 96.1%:
“You think ‘This is crazy. How can anything come up with something like that?’ ” Norpoth said “But that’s exactly the kind of equation I used to predict Bill Clinton winning in ‘96, that I used to predict that George Bush would win in 2004, and, as you remember four years ago, that Obama would win in 2012.”
Norpoth then added data from the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries to narrow down the forecast to specific candidates. As he brought up the first slide with matchup results, the silence was broken by muttering from the audience.
“Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]. This is almost too much to believe.” Norpoth said, with a few members of the audience laughing nervously. “The probability of that [outcome] is almost complete certainty, 97 percent. It’s almost ‘Take it to the bank.’ ”(via)
Even if Trump doesn’t win the nomination, Norpoth’s model sees a 61% chance that the Republicans will win the presidency, regardless of the nominee. That’s not to say it won’t be a close race though – in a race against Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, Hillary only has a 55% chance of winning.
As for Bernie Sanders, his odds aren’t nearly as good:
Donald Trump has a 97 percent chance of defeating Hillary Clinton and a 99 percent chance of defeating Bernie Sanders in the general election, according to Norpoth’s formula.
…Norpoth’s model showed Sanders losing against Rubio or Cruz with a 0.6 percent gap in the popular vote, giving a Rubio or Cruz ticket a 60 percent chance of winning against the Vermont senator.(via)
While the nominee for both parties is yet to be determined, Norpoth believes that as long as the candidates have 54% of the popular vote, they’re golden. “If you win by 54%, you have a big majority in the electoral college…nobody who has ever gotten 54% has lost.”
May god have mercy on our souls.
[Via The Statesman]