A university professor says the statistical model that has correctly predicted every presidential winner for the last 100 years except one indicates that Donald Trump will almost certainly become president if he wins the GOP nomination.
Helmut Norpoth, a political science professor at Stony Brook University in New York, has created a statistical model for presidential elections using data such as candidates’ primary results.
The model shows Trump has a 97 percent chance of beating Hillary Clinton if she’s the Democratic nominee, and a 99 percent chance of trumping Bernie Sanders if he wins the nomination.
Norpoth presented the results of his research at the SUNY Global Center in Manhattan, telling the audience: “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, if he’s a nominee of the party.”
Norpoth told the audience that he at first “thought it was sort of a joke,” referring the possibility of Trump winning, prompting the audience to laugh, reported The Statesman.
“Well, I'll tell you right now, it ain’t a joke anymore,” he said.
As the room turned silent, Norpoth said there’s a 61 percent chance overall that a Republican will win the general election.
“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.”
He called the model’s indication of Trump over Clinton as “almost complete certainty.”
“It’s almost ‘Take it to the bank,’” he added.
Trump responded to the news in typical fashion, sharing a link to a story about the professor’s model on Facebook and adding: “If I get the nomination, I will beat Hillary Clinton and Make America Great Again!”
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