Loading ...Political scientist Helmut Norpoth fields media calls every week seeking comment on the upcoming presidential election. Why the interest? In 2016, he was one of a handful of experts who correctly predicted the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election
Norpoth, a professor in Stony Brook’s Department of Political Science, has enjoyed notable success forecasting elections based on his Primary Model, a statistical representation of U.S. presidential races based on data going back more than a century.
In 2020, his model once again projects a Trump victory, giving the incumbent President a 90-percent chance of being re-elected in a landslide — a controversial call that runs contrary to current polls.
The Primary Model has correctly predicted five of the past six presidential elections, and when applied to previous elections, correctly predicts an impressive 25 of the last 27, 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 — two extremely close and contested votes marred by allegations of voting inaccuracies.