Prognosticators take opposing sides on who will win on Election Day

He’s a professor of political science at Stony Brook University whose formula accurately predicted of 25 out of 27 presidential elections.

And with just days to go until Election Day, Helmut Norpoth is predicting another win for President Donald Trump.

“I give Donald Trump a 91% chance of being re-elected,” he said. “The candidates who did better in the primaries is predicted to win in November.”

The professor created the “Primary Model” which relies on presidential primary results. Norpoth says Joe Biden’s poor primary performance in New Hampshire put him at a significant disadvantage to Trump. But history professor Dr. Allan Lichtman disagrees.

“Trump had no opponent, Biden had numerous opponents in the primaries so automatically the system is going to predict Donald Trump will win regardless of the other factors,” he said.

Lichtman who has also correctly predicted the winner of each race since Ronald Reagan’s re-election victory says never in the history of our country has the White House suffered such a sudden and dramatic reversal of fortune in just a few months. He says Trump botched the response to the pandemic and ignored cries for racial justice reform. He believes Biden will be the next president.

“Instead of dealing substantively with this crisis he reverted to his challenger playbook and tried to talk his way out of it,” Lichtman said. “That doesn’t work when you’re the incumbent.”

His predictions are based on the “key system,” true/false questions that gauge the strength and performance of the party in the White House based on the premise that it’s governing not campaigning that counts.

“Keys look at midterm elections results, third parties, party nominations, long and short term economy, social unrest, scandal,” he said.