“For Trump it will be a landslide victory”

Published on: 01/10/2020 5:22 PM

By Marco Liconti

Donald Trump will be reconfirmed in the White House with a margin of 186 electoral votes. A landslide victory. Helmut Norpoth, professor of political science at Stony Brook University and creator of the ‘Primary Model’, has no doubts, with which he predicted with great precision the outcome of the last five of the six elections. “My model gives President Trump a 91% chance of winning the 2020 presidential election, with only a 9% chance for Joe Biden. Trump will get 362 electoral votes, Biden 176,” Norpoth told Adnkronos. “This forecast – he emphasizes – is final and unconditional, it means that there will be no updates.”

For those who point out that US major media polls currently assign a more or less wide margin of victory to the Democratic candidate, Norpoth recalls what happened four years ago. “In 2016, when polls and experts predicted the victory of Hillary Clinton, my model was practically the only one who predicted the victory of Donald Trump. And it did so as of March 7 of that year, awarding him the 87% prize of chances of success “.

Thanks to the ‘Primary Model’, Norpoth is considered in the United States the ‘nonconformist’ of pollsters, the nonconformist of political scientists. And yet, in the end, you (almost) always guess the outcome. But how does the “blueprint” you have developed work? “It is a statistical model that relies on the presidential primaries and, furthermore, on the electoral cycle to predict the outcome of the general elections. This year, the model has been calibrated to predict the electoral college vote,” he explains, referring to to the group of large voters (538), who according to the Constitution are tasked with electing the president of the United States every four years.

In support of his thesis, Norpoth notes that his model, also applied to the past, “has guessed the winners of 25 out of 27 elections since 1912, the year the primaries were introduced. The only errors are 1960, one of the presidential elections with the narrowest margin in history, and 2000, when Florida’s recount gave Bush the victory, but Al Gore still won the popular vote. “

“Winning the first primary – he continues – is crucial to the November election victory. On the Democratic side, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders split the primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, while Trump easily won the Republican primaries in New Hampshire – the Republican primaries in South Carolina were canceled this year. “

In addition, “what favors Trump for 2020 is the presidential election cycle that has been running for almost 200 years.” The political scientist explains it better: “After a term in the White House, the outgoing party is the favorite for reelection, unless it has two or more terms behind it.” To refine his model, Norpoth incorporated electoral data beginning in 1912. “For elections prior to 1952, data was entered from all primaries. Beginning in 1952, data was only used as a rule of thumb for the primaries in New Hampshire. from South Carolina were inserted since 2008 “.

“Both Obama in his time and Hillary Clinton in 2016 enjoyed strong support from one of the most loyal Democratic constituencies, African Americans, who are numerically few in New Hampshire,” Norpoth said. “Also Joe Biden this year. Relying on South Carolina as his ‘trench'”. A trench that, however, in the opinion of the ‘magician’ of political forecasts, will be easily overcome by Donald Trump, who will conquer the White House for another four years.