Professor Norpoth from Long Island Stoney Brook University, a political science professor, created an election model that has been accurate since 1996 when he predicted the popular vote. For this 2016 election, it predicts that Donald Trump will win the popular vote.
The Model Goes Way Back
This model goes back to 1828 in the time when the popular vote was widespread, and the Democrat vs. Republican legacy was born. More than 200 years later, the model has been on-point in every election since then.
Norpoth used this model in March to predict that Donald Trump would win. He still feels confident about the prediction. The prediction claimed an 87% chance that Trump would beat Clinton. When asked by Lou Dobbs on Fox about if his model still predicts the same thing, Norpoth responded with “the same thing.” “I’ve done it for the past 5 election years and the model has predicted the winner of the popular vote correctly each time,” he explained.
The Only Time It Didn’t Work Was With Bush
President Bush. http://original.antiwar.com/jodie-evans/2013/04/24/bushs-legacy-ought-to-be-on-trial/
The only outlier case was when Bush won the presidency in 2000. The model predicted that Al Gore would take the win the popular vote. That election was hotly debated. Norpoth said, “Even in 2000 if Florida had a proper count it probably would have went to Gore.”
Behind the Polls
The polls are almost always leaning towards Hillary. Question is who’s being questioned in these polls? They don’t tell you how many people are voting or any of the background details. Norpoth says that polling companies “do a lot of weighting after fact” in order to fill in for the low amount of call-in responses. He said, “They get what they get, and then they check against the Census distribution. The L.A. Times poll has usually been a poll that’s showing Trump doing quite well, being ahead or at least tied, when the other polls are showing him way behind. So a lot of it depends on how the weighting works, and that’s a big problem.”
No Standards
There is no standard for these polls. One place says Trump is winning and all these other polls show Clinton prevailing. Norpoth says that Donald Trump did great in the primaries and he did because he beat a lot of Republicans fighting for that spot. Hillary didn’t have too much competition. The model isn’t based on opinions. It’s the poll that no one is reporting. It’s based on past elections, general elections, primary elections, etc. The political science professor explained that in 1912 when the candidates would run in the primaries, the candidate who did great in those usually was the winner. It is worth a reminder though that the popular vote does not elect the president. The electoral college and state votes determine the winner.
Donald Trump has been successful throughout this election cycle. He fought hard through the primaries and won the Republican nomination. Norpoth’s model has repeatedly demonstrated it’s success in deciding who would win the presidency based on the popular vote. History has a tendency to repeat itself and it looks like it’s in Trump’s favor. Will it translate into the electoral college votes?
