Prolific predictor of elections says Trump wins 2020 in landslide

(KLTV) - The chances that President Donald Trump wins re-election in 2020 is near certain, according to a political science professor whose election model has a history of correctly predicting election results.

Stony Brook University professor Helmut Norpoth’s Primary Model shows President Trump has a 91-percent chance of winning re-election, according to his interview with Stony Brook News.

Norpoth’s model relies on the results of presidential primaries, not polls that are often used as indicators of popularity. According to Norpoth, Biden is in a much weaker position than Trump because of his poor showing in the first two primary races.

Norpoth was one of a handful of pollsters who correctly predicted Trump’s victory in 2016, and his Primary Model has predicted five of the six presidential elections since 1996. When applied to previous elections, the model correctly predicted 25 of the last 27 elections, missing only the 2000 election in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore and the 1960 election in which John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon.

“The key to the November election is the primaries,” Norpoth told Fox News in July. “The early primaries are giving us a lot of information. Based on that, Donald Trump won them very easily in his party. Joe Biden, the likely nominee for the Democrats, had a great deal of trouble, pulled it together, but on balance is that stronger performance of primaries that gives Donald Trump the edge in November.

“People have forgotten how Joe Biden did in New Hampshire,” Norpoth added during his interview with Stony Brook News. “He was terrible. He got 8.4 percent of the vote, which is unbelievable for a candidate with any aspirations of being president.”

As of early August, CNN polled Joe Biden at 51 percent and President Trump at 42 percent. Reuters, ABC/Washington Post, CBS/YouGov, and Fox News polls showed similar results, forecasting Biden between 49 percent and 53 percent of the popular vote. It is important to note that in the U.S., the president is elected by the electoral college, not by the popular vote, and national polls only approximate the popular vote.