Professor Helmut Norpoth, Who Predicted 2016 Victory, Predicts Trump Has 91% Chance of Winning Re-Election

Yesterday, Professor Norpoth appeared on Fox News and explained why he believed Trump has a 91 percent chance of winning re-election.

He also predicts that Trump will win states including Vermont for a massive 362 electoral college victory over Joe Biden.

See Professor Norpoth's interview with Laura Ingraham below:

Many political observers and experts have called Professor Norpoth the "gold standard" in election predictions.

He was one of the few political scientists that accurately predicted that Trump would defeat Hillary.

Professor Norpoth himself wrote his predictions on Newsday:

With much of the country in lockdown, millions of Americans out of work, and Wall Street crashes evoking memories of the Great Depression, it may seem foolish to predict a comfortable reelection for President Donald Trump.

But that is what my prediction model forecasts: It gives Trump a 91% chance of beating the all-but-certain Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump would get 362 electoral votes, Biden 176. (Trump would also beat Sen. Bernie Sanders, who dropped out last week, with 390 electoral votes to the Vermonter’s 148.)

For more than 100 years, the model has selected the winner of almost all presidential campaigns, including Trump’s victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. The Primary Model is a statistical algorithm that uses presidential primaries as the key predictor of the general election. In short, Trump is favored to win because of his superior primary performance and the tendency of the electoral pendulum to hold steady after one term in the Oval Office. On the off chance of a mismatch between electoral and popular votes, as happened in 2016, the forecast for 2020 targets the vote of the Electoral College (assuming a majority of electors for one nominee).

Winning primaries, especially the early ones, has proved to be a powerful leading indicator of victory in November. Trump, who had some token opposition, handily won the Republican primary in New Hampshire while Biden came in fifth on the Democratic side. Biden had a strong comeback in South Carolina but a split verdict in the first two contests, which augurs poorly for November.

What also favors Trump is the operation of the electoral pendulum of presidential elections. Just consider as an illustration how that pendulum has worked since 1960: When the party in the White House was in its first term, it won reelection six out of seven times, meaning the electoral pendulum generally stayed put. The exception is President Jimmy Carter losing to GOP challenger Ronald Reagan in 1980. On the other hand, when a party had held the White House for two terms or more, it lost seven out of eight times. Meaning the electoral pendulum generally swings to the challenging party on those occasions. The exception in that period came in 1988: President George H.W. Bush extended the GOP hold of the White House after two Reagan terms. All of this adds up to powerful odds in favor of someone like Trump seeking reelection after one term.

Now add the knock-out punch: primary performance. It may be surprising to learn that presidential primaries have been around since 1912. That year, President William Howard Taft was challenged in Republican primaries, not just by a token opponent, but by a former president, Theodore Roosevelt. Taft badly lost to TR in the GOP primaries but was handed the nomination nonetheless at the party’s national convention. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Woodrow Wilson won his party’s primary battle, was awarded his party’s nomination, and went on to win the general election. A pattern was set: the party nominee with the stronger primary performance defeats the nominee with the weaker primary performance. It has held up for more than 100 years.

If Democrats underestimate Trump's strength, this could also lead to strategic mistakes.

For example, in 2016, Hillary was so confident that should not lose the fabled Democratic "blue wall" that she didn't campaign in many states in the Midwest.

Well, Trump campaigned hard in those states and won them!

If the data is flawed or doesn't tell the whole story as Norpoth appears to suggest, then Biden's campaign may potentially make a few strategic blunders.

Fox News confirms Norpoth's predictions on The Ingraham Angle:

A political science professor who predicted President Trump's win in 2016 is forecasting another victory.

In an interview on "The Ingraham Angle." Stony Brook University's Helmut Norpoth stated Friday that he believes the key to another victory for the president lies in the examination of primary races.

"OK, the key to the November election is the primaries. And, the only primaries [are] already giving us a lot of information," he explained.

"And, based on that, Donald Trump won them very easily in his party," Norpoth continued. "Joe Biden -- the likely nominee for the Democrats -- had a great deal of trouble holding it together. But, on balance, it's that stronger performance of primaries that gives Donald Trump the edge in November."

Norpoth’s “Primary Model” shows that President Trump has a 91 percent chance of being reelected and also shows he would get 362 electoral votes. The model is based on a statistical and historical theory that the professor outlines.

That said, according to Newsday, there are some factors the professor doesn't take into account like the state of the world -- a pandemic, an unprecedented economic crisis, a country in turmoil over systemic racial injustice -- and which states Trump would have to win to clinch the 362 electoral votes.

The president would need to carry all of the states he won in 2016 plus New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Vermont, Virginia, Minnesota, Maine, and New Hampshire.

Norpoth conceded to Ingraham that the COVID-19 pandemic could have an impact the model doesn't take into account but noted that he's not seeing a "dent" in Trump's approval rating.

With Biden's mental health, COVID-19, and George Floyd riots, the political equation in 2020 appears as murky as ever!

However, Professor Norpoth appears to suggest that the basic principles still apply.

It's still early in the campaign and there will be many more developments to come!

President Trump outsmarted conventional wisdom once.

He can do it again.