Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook Helmut Norpoth, above, moments after announcing his forecast at the SUNY Global Center on Feb. 22nd, 2016. Norpoth's findings with the electoral cycle method show the Republican Party winning with a three point lead in the general election. CHRISTOPHER CAMERON/THE STATESMAN
Political science professor Helmut Norpoth, above, moments after announcing his presidential election forecast at the SUNY Global Center on Feb. 22. Norpoth’s findings with the electoral cycle method show the Republican Party having a 61 percent chance of winning the general election. CHRISTOPHER CAMERON/THE STATESMAN

A professor of political science at Stony Brook University has forecasted that Donald Trump has a minimum 97 percent chance of winning the general election as the Republican nominee.

Professor Helmut Norpoth’s forecast presentation took place Monday evening in the SUNY Global Center in Manhattan, which was organized by the Stony Brook Alumni Association.

Norpoth created a statistical model of presidential elections that uses a candidate’s performance in their party’s primary and patterns in the electoral cycle as predictors of the presidential vote in the general election.

Donald Trump has a 97 percent chance of defeating Hillary Clinton and a 99 percent chance of defeating Bernie Sanders in the general election, according to Norpoth’s formula.

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“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,” Norpoth said, “if he’s a nominee of the [Republican] party.”

Norpoth’s primary model works for every presidential election since 1912, with the notable exception of the 1960 election. These results give the model an accuracy of 96.1 percent.

Norpoth began the presentation with an introduction of the potential matchups in the general election, including a hypothetical Sanders vs. Trump general election.

“When I started out with this kind of display a few months ago, I thought it was sort of a joke.” Norpoth said referring to Trump and Sanders, as many alumni in the audience laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you right now, it ain’t a joke anymore.”

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As the presentation continued, laughter turned to silence as Norpoth forecasted a 61 percent chance of a Republican win in the general election.

This forecast was made using the electoral cycle model, which studies a pattern of voting in the presidential election that makes it less likely for an incumbent party to hold the presidency after two terms in office. The model does not assume who would be the party nominees or the conditions of the country at the time.

“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.”

Norpoth then added data from the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries to narrow down the forecast to specific candidates. As he brought up the first slide with matchup results, the silence was broken by muttering from the audience.

“Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]. This is almost too much to believe.” Norpoth said, with a few members of the audience laughing nervously. “The probability of that [outcome] is almost complete certainty, 97 percent. It’s almost ‘Take it to the bank.’ ”

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The primary model predicts a Trump victory with such certainty due to Trump’s relatively high success in the Republican primaries, Norpoth said. Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.

In contrast, Norpoth forecasted that a hypothetical presidential race with Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio on the Republican ticket would be a much closer race. The results showed Clinton with a 55 percent chance of winning the race against Cruz or Rubio with a 0.3 percent lead in the popular vote.

Norpoth’s model showed Sanders losing against Rubio or Cruz with a 0.6 percent gap in the popular vote, giving a Rubio or Cruz ticket a 60 percent chance of winning against the Vermont senator.

Norpoth added that while the non-Trump Republican ticket would be much more unlikely to win the general election due to differences in the popular vote and the electoral college vote, there is almost no chance that Trump would lose the electoral college vote with his forecasted lead in the popular vote.

“If you win by 54 percent [of the popular vote], you have a big majority in the electoral college,” Norpoth said. “Nobody who has ever gotten 54 percent has lost.”

Featured Image Credit: GAGE SKIDMORE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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935 comments

  1. Professor Helmut Norpoth actually got the Election wrong!

    He said TRUMP would win the popular vote! He shouldn’t play these silly games & just go by The Electoral College!! LOL

  2. his model also predicted that Trump would win the popular vote by almost 10%.

    Clinton won the popular vote.

    When there are only 2 possible outcomes – its easy to crow. But on the hard stuff – his model was way off.

  3. The result of the election doesn’t contradict anything I wrote. The article was self promotional fluff. I never said he was going to be wrong – but its still true that there was no independent validation of his model.

  4. I am now that an insane bigot who has no interest in public policy is now the president elect. Many millions of americans are scared while the rest of the world is still stunned.

    The brits are delighted because we can’t make fun of them for Brexit anymore.

  5. Looks like another Reagan type landslide in the making for the Donald! Democrats are switching to the Republican party by the thousands in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Even though the mainstream media is imposing a complete news blackout on the huge daily Wikileaks dumps, thanks to the internet, Americans are learning the truth about Hillary’s corrupt past, and how she says one thing in speeches to Wall Street bankers, about “covering their asses for 8 years”, while attacking them in public!

  6. And you know what they say about statistics – the last refuge of liars and braggarts.

  7. no, they don’t. Obama got us 78 months of private sector jobs growth, that’s historic record. Not even Clinton who got us 20 million private sector jobs managed that.
    Meanwhile, Dubya remains the ONLY president EVER to LOSE us private sector jobs, nearly HALF A MILLION.

  8. Didn’t Reuters say that more than half of Clintons visitors at the State Dept were also donor to the Clinton foundation ….. when they left out about 80% of her visitors at the State Dept ???

  9. I am in Ireland and I can tell you there is absolutely no leadership in the European Union, Germany, France or elsewhere except possibly in Britain. A Clinton lead USA will spread the European model right across the world and that will be a disaster for humanity.Only Trump can row back the damage already done

  10. The self serving PR article is the only source that tells us its correct . No independent review or verification. My brother in law wrote similar (but more sophiticated) models like this for a living in Europe for political organizations. I have a very good understanding of how the academic peer review model works – apparently you don’t.

  11. I love this! I want REAL CHANGE and Trump with his business acumen, we’re going to go forwards not backward economically speaking, specially in my heart for those families that are left behind in Obama’s disastrous diservice to this country. NO CLINTONS, enough is enough of them, they should have never been allowed to run for office AGAIN, that was madness.

  12. Polls only poll likely voters…those who vote on a regular basis…and excludes the millions of voters who registered to vote this year for the first time….and the polls have been caught giving the undecideds to Hillary.

  13. 538 is biased because it is based on completely biased purchased polls.
    The average media polling bias right now is 4.2%
    Average CNN Bias 7.1%
    Average Reuters Bias 10.5% ! !
    See long room dot com slash polls for statistical analysis

  14. I could live with a Democrat. But a LIAR – that has gotten away with the long list of things that Hillary has….. will nauseate me to the core. I hope the Republicans get their Sh#T together ….. I am deeply pissed at the turn of events. If trump loses in November it will be his own damn fault cause he didn’t stay on message. Hillary is a political disaster. If she gets elected – it means Americans no longer give a Sh#t about honesty, integrity, justice or even the future of this country.

  15. She has like 6 point spread right now and the election isn’t for 3 months. Calm down.

  16. If you really feel that way, then the pollsters have done their job well. I doubt that the American voter is as fickle as the polls like to make it appear. And the media that presents these poll results are also hoping that it has the affect of people being disheartened by what is being reported and they just stay home. Some time ago they stopped letting the news media project a winner before the polls were closed for that very reason. That’s why I pay little attention to the polls……they can change the mind, change your intention and perhaps the course of history.

  17. Keep on dreaming little dude. Hillary bots are going to be in for a rude awakening on election night. Expect the Hillary bots to come up with conspiracy theories on why Hillary lost in a landslide election. Oh btw I’m not a Trump supporter nice try though loser.

  18. Another Trumpanzee in for a rough landing! Reality will bite you hard. Rigged!!!

  19. Hillary is 10 points ahead of the Republicans’ Narcissistic Cheetos Jesus.

  20. Most of our stuff is highly concentrated and therefore subject to event risk. The “issue” is very low cost basis for that stuff which as you know are the townhouses, the apt. bldg. and our condo. Unless NYC real estate drops more than 25%, it wouldn’t be worth selling, at all. Do you think it’s worth it to take the tax bill hit and diversify the real property? Regardless, I’m glad I listened to my dad when I graduated. 15 years on these commercial notes has flown by. I really got lucky with child unit 1 (I’ll still need to pay for Med School and he also wants an MBA). Child unit 2 is going to be a little trickier but she was chosen this week as captain for senior cheer (isnt that exciting!!?) She told us she’s the first sophmore to be made captain for the senior squad! All those dance lessons appear to be paying off. If she can score 95% percentile or higher, I think we’ll see some good offers / packages. Definitely DOES NOT want to go away which makes the mom unit very, very happy! NYU gave out a ton of generous packages to local kids this year so hopefully that’ll stay the same. My understanding is they still don’t have enough dorms so they fill up the class with townies. Personally, I’d like to see her @ Columbia. Cheer will help tremendously on her app. and give them a reason to give her a good deal. I’ll keep you posted, homie…

  21. “Bunk list”

    That was easy. Deny it all you want. Let me know when you have counter-evidence to share.

  22. Here’s a list for you.

    Proto-Saharan (5000 – 3000 B.C.)
    Wadi El-Hol or ‘Proto-Sinaitic’ (2000 B.C. – 1400 B.C.)
    Nsibidi (5000 B.C. – present)
    Tifinagh or ‘Lybico-Berber’ or ‘Mande’ (c. 3000 B.C. – present)
    Ge’ez or ‘Ethiopic’ (800 B.C. – present)
    ‘Old Nubian’ (800 A.D. – 1500 A.D.)

  23. “There were zero written languages for sub Sahara Africa”

    Why won’t you share your source? Why do I find proof of dozens of written languages from that region when I do 5 minutes of research?

  24. There were zero written languages for sub Sahara Africa save for one small corner of modern day Ethiopia were they used Arabic.

    I don’t care what you claim, weirdo.

  25. So, no comment on how you were caught spreading fibs on the internet again? Where did you learn that there were no Sub-Sahara Africa written languages? Please share your source.

  26. I was wondering where my stalker went, I really was. Where were you? Did you blow your entire social security on drugs??

  27. Unfortunately, Hillary is ahead of Trump in the most recent polls. This so called ‘model” was taken several months ago. Things change rapidly during the election. I hate to admit it, but Hillary looks like she’s going to win the election

  28. “Did you know that Sub-Sahara Africa never developed a single formal or written language? ”

    Why didn’t you respond to the list of written Sub-Sahara Africa languages I sent you?

    Where is my $1 million bet?

    “You must not be a good person and you probably have a dark heart. ”

    All of your comments are full of hate. Are all rich geniuses like yourself this lacking in self-awareness and factual knowledge about the world?

  29. ROFL from the man who spends his time calling people names and showing his obsession with a mythical “crooked Hilary” I’ll take “unhinged” thank you 🙂 Its gentler than your usual fare it would appear.

  30. You’re a pretty unhinged guy.

    I promise I’ll never make fun of Nate Silver again. Sorry.

  31. ROFL – its public.

    So you try to trash fivethirtyeight as biased, but you get all upset when I take a look at your public profile and see your own bias write large ? Thats enough to make a dog laugh.

    Thank you for confirming my point, You have nothing intelligent to say about the original topic – a self serving puff piece about an unvalidated election forecasting model that depends entirely on the claims of its author,

    Nice job on the namecalling.

  32. “Just noticed”, huh? No, I’m afraid you’re just another nosy little psycho.

    I keep my profile public because I get a kick out weirdos like you poking around.

    I wouldn’t waste my time looking but just out of curiosity- is your Disqus profile set to private?

  33. lol. All you have done with your post is to make YOUR biases perfectly clear. I just noticed that the “news ” sites you follow are fringe right wing conspiracy sites like Breitbart. I can see now why you’re so emotionally invested in this broken model. And since most polling data clearly puts Clinton ahead in most of the battleground states, you have no use for that either.

  34. It’s good for you Hillary bots to have some hope before she gets defeat in a landslide election. This model has accurately predict the last 5 elections since it was introduce to the public in 1996.

  35. It’s good for you trumpettes to at least have some sliver of hope before he get blown out in a fairly exaggerated fashion. This model has a big problem in that, historically the candidates in question perform fairly consistently with various demographics, in relation to candidates from their same party. For example, the Republican candidate typically performs pretty consistently with Hispanic. Trump is the only candidate to be run through the model who does not – and who in fact underperforms drastically compared to former, fellow Republican candidates. If Trump were performing typically with these various demographic groups, he would have a very good chance to win. Unfortunately for him (and for you) due to his drastic underperforming with minorities (specifically hispanics), women, and many others, he is mathematically eliminated already. He cannot win. Also, this model fails to account for the share of the minority vote and how that share is distributed within states key to his victory. This further compounds his problems. For example, Nevada, Florida, and New Mexico are almost certainly “blue” this year due to the hispanic vote – that was never the case before.

    Now if you don’t really understand what I just explained, allow me to make it easy on you. Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in 2012. In order for Trump to win, he will need to outperform Mitt Romney with key core demographic groups. As it stands, he is WAY underperforming Romney’s numbers. How can trump win the presidency if he cannot even match Romney’s numbers, and is in fact way under Romney’s numbers with one of the most important groups (hispanics)? Trump is not going to win. He cannot win.

  36. Yes, because (((Nate Silver))) sure ain’t “hookin for business” (whatever the the hell that goofy shit means?).

    Yep, he’s a squared away guy with no biases. At all. He promises.

  37. Dummy, it takes 270 to win. Shows how little you know. Can it!! Trump wins the election. Deal with it.

  38. LOL Nate Sliver fail to predict the 2015 UK election. He also fail to predict who the Republican nominee was going to be.

  39. His claim of accuracy is also not validated by any external source. The entire article is self serving PR. His model ignores who the actual nominees are and any actual polling concerning them. And even then his “certainty” is a 61% prediction.

    Models far more comprehensive than his (and with a MUCH better independently VALIDATED track record) are predicting the reverse. See fivethirtyeight.

  40. The primary model has accurately predict the outcome of almost every election since 1912. Professor Norpoth use the model to predict the outcomes of the 96, 2004, 2008, and 2012 election.

  41. You’re assuming people in leaning blue states are still dumb enough to vote for Hillary Clinton.

  42. #neverhillary so u r wrong, SMH

    Got No Worries if Trump Elected… Democrat House Impeaches Trump & VP within the Year, Shortly After Democrat Senate Convicts Trump & VP for installing SoH Pelosi as PotUS.. you reap what you sow

    #NeverTrump is never for ever btw
    .

  43. So Trump Beats Hillary? Democrat House Impeaches Trump & VP, then Democrat Senate Convicts Trump & VP so you win

  44. Lmao you don’t even know the difference between a synonym and an abbreviation

  45. No but I would if Hillzilla had her itchy fingers on the nuclear trigger, Goldwater girl that she was and is. She will start the big one if she gets it. Get it, old boy.

  46. You have nothing in common with the real Rexford Tugwell. All this water carrying for Hilllzilla. Tugwell was a strong backer of Henry Wallace.

  47. Yes you are. Now go back to kindergarten if you can meet their
    “strict requirements.”

  48. I know what an arse is. You are doing “rather well’ on defining the term, now.

  49. Bullshit! We voted to take out the Harperites like the Obamaites and Klantonites. You as usual don’t know what you’re talking about.

  50. Will Rogers said it best. “It’s not what you kmow. It’s what you know that just ain’t so.”

  51. Wrong I’m not using any of your stuffed polls. Go home to your mama.

  52. They don’t know what they’re saying. They drank the Hillzilla Kool Aid.

  53. Prediction is real and you’ll find in November. I’d be willing to go Vegas and put money on it and clean off you stupid Hillzilla loving Yanks.

  54. You must have if you’re backing that Goldwater girl who wants to blow everybody up.

  55. Yes it is. Reuters virtually came up with the same results. Another model gave to Bernie Sanders if he took the Democratic contest– not likely now.

  56. This is all historical correlation. Whether it is correct depends on whether the right correlations were checked. Got doubts.

  57. they had trump winning the were right

    They have been wrong only a few times out of all the primaries

  58. Lmao caught lying so make insults

    Even fox has him down 7 points

    But like most conservatives you lack a 1st grade understanding of math

  59. Texhnically yes but in politics the term poll only refers to estimates for an election

  60. No he isn’t . I’m sure you are using a biased poll nobody has ever heard of a an extreamly low sample size

  61. Clearly not

    Trump can’t get more then

    40% millenial
    40% female
    25% black
    25 % Hispanic

    That on its own is enough to show he can’t win

  62. No they don’t. Let me guess your using a poll that nobody has heard of and has a sample size of 1000 or less

  63. The more time you waste on what some Canucks would call an asshat the more time you could better use with those with some common sense and decency.

  64. That it’s worse than not being able to spell. You need to learn some manners, Yank. If you were here in Canada I’d have to oblige you old boy.

  65. Just go back to your spelling tutor. It’s a good start. Maybe one day you get past primary school.

  66. Now You can’t spell the word “you.” Oh the wonders of your “education.”

  67. Do you know how to spell the word “are”? I know that one’s just plain wrong. Take off. Even you can spell that one.

  68. But you can spell, and the other old boy seems to have a bit of problem unless my Yank is completely off. I use it now and then with my Amercan friends below the border.

  69. “Wud!” again! If I didn’t knbw better , and I don’t,I’d think you need a spelling tutor.

  70. I’m a bit fluent in Yank though I’m a Canuck. But “cud”! Isn’t that a misspelling even for Yank or American or in your case maybe Amurkan, the fascist version.

  71. Yeah, it will be much more lopsided. Look for another 1988 or even a 1972 style election but worse for Hillzilla. At least George McGovern had integrity and ethics– something Hillzilla has none of.

  72. No he isn’t. He’s ahead of her right now. This is without the grand jury indictment for a felony or felonies or her husband’s war on women being exposed or the worst of Hillzilla’s past exposed. Can you say Goldwater girl?

  73. Other variables are in play. A Reuters computer model predcited that a Republican will win the presidency this year. Now what say you to that?

  74. Wrong! He predicted the winner every time but 1`960 which noone else could have predicted and didn’t.

  75. I’ve got news for you Hlllzilla is lying damn fascist and warmongering loony toons.

  76. I’d be nervous if Hillzilla were even close to winning. I hate nuclear war. It just blows everything up.

  77. You’ve got at least two choices– Donald Trump or Jill Stein.

  78. Donald Trump is getting blacks more than any GOP candiate in over half a century. He’s one with them. He’s bonded with blacks. Hillzilla is a world class racist, fascist, anti Semite, and just plain criminal.

  79. If you don’t live until January 2017 it’s sad. We;ll miss you. Do have a good life.
    All the best. We Canucks hate all that US racism. Hey if it wasn’t for the likes of Hilzilla maybe all that would be history.

  80. Not in the least likely! Take it from a Canuck. Your Hitler in Drag, Hillzilla is as good as beat.

  81. Check out Professor Helmut Norpoth, Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University at his website “Primary Model” he has developed a statistical model that has been accurate for every election since 1912 when primary elections began. According to this model Trump has at least an 87% chance of beating Hillary.

  82. Hahaha this is what happens when you want to get some attention, but stripping naked for the camera isn’t an option…

  83. Depends on your POV. Lincoln took us into the most devastating war, by far, of our history. To what purpose? “Keeping the Union”? Abolition was a side effect, no other nation had to kill off a generation of young men and impoverish half the country for 100 years to free slaves.
    Mainly Lincoln established that the Federal Government can do whatever it wants. If you are a believer in Big Government, that is a good thing. If you aren’t, not so.

  84. His model isn’t validated by any peers or external source. His claims of accuracy aren’t validated either. The article is entirely promotional and is at odds with all available scientific polling. Its unlikely to be useful in actually predicting the results of the election in Nov. The prof is hookin for business. Nothing more.

  85. That is just not true the kkk has always been the military arm of the democrat party al gores father filibustered the civil rights act and sen bird dem speaker of the house was a kkk grand wizard check your facts

  86. I roll my eyes at your, “I am this and I am good. I am not that therefore that is bad.” rationalization of self aggrandizement encouraged by modern binary culture and vacuous modern politics. The seductiveness of inherent and unearned greatness bestowed for adopting the party’s off the rack, one size fits all, empty ideology.
    Reality never appeals to ego. You’re not the ultra moral ethical superhuman you think you are, and people you disagree with aren’t vile monsters. All just people.
    Try to face reality with some dignity and humility rather than foaming at the mouth quite so much.

  87. His last name is not “idiot.” It is “puppet.” Far too stupid to understand much of anything, this moron repeats what he is told to repeat by his ruling masters at Media Matters, Huff Post, Salon, the DNC, or whatever group tells this useful idiot how and what to think.

  88. Professors of political science: sigh..they are the stupidest people ever. They are just Sanders’ supporters. They are all liberal ahos wishing Hilary to lose. Any fools can tell he does not know math.

  89. no it’s a very BAD predictor. you WANT to see that because people are inclined to see symmetry. This is why most whites don’t see black poverty it is asymmetrical which we are programmed to ignore. Bringing up this asymmetry makes whites angry for that reason as well.

    White House is not a metronome
    fivethirtyeight . blogs . nytimes . com /2013/07/18/the-white-house-is-not-a-metronome/
    Look, conservatives choose based on emotions and progressives based on substance and policy, so … unless cons change their plat form, they might never win the White House again. Then there is policy positions……Low unemployment, more minorities (in Virginia and Arizona) and presidential year elections are all good for Democrats there are much BETTER predictors like the economy and demographics and voter turnout experience.

  90. no. that is also a story line you tell yourself to make you feel less crappy about yourself.

    progressives have achieved immensely MORE than conservatives over the last 100 years:

    Allow an actually story loaded with actual facts

    Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

    Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

    He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded RURAL electrification. He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make RURAL loans. Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads. Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university. It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune. Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and DIED for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air. In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too.

  91. JeNaait:
    Yes, you have a good point. Of course I was referring to recent history, where the alternation of parties has been more predictable. Party alternation is NOT a great predictor. But none of the presidential succession predictors are very good.

    Please note that these are all statistical models, and they focus only on probabilities. If two variables are highly correlated, then we can say that one variable explains a lot of the variance in the other variable. For example, the outdoor air temperature at a certain place will usually be highly correlated with the outside air temperature of another place that is two blocks away.

    But none of the presidential succession predictors are as good as the temperature example is. They are not highly correlated with election outcomes, and they don’t explain a lot of variance. It ‘s more like comparing the outdoor air temperature at a certain place to the outside air temperature of another place that is 5,000 miles away. Pretty wobbly.

    So, within the bunch of weak presidential succession variables the study used, party alternation is not bad.

  92. nope, the White House is not a metronome. Democrats won 5 in a row, Republicans won 6, when they were still liberal

  93. But left and right aren’t equal and do not live in bubbles to the same extent. You are wrong.

  94. bull crap both siderist comment.
    the two sides aren’t equal, that’s just a story line. progressives actually WANT to do good by the people, Repubs just give guns to crazies and give our taxes to billionaires.
    repubs didn’t EVEN talk about climate change, education or Flint.

  95. it’s just 2 choices, like a flip a coin. Also, predicting Obama would win wasn’t very hard, not in 2008, because any Democrat would have, and not in 2012 cos incumbents seldom lose.

  96. Wait you didn’t realize how dumb this arguement on your side now lmao

    Look at general election polling trump has no hand and is falling further and further behind Clinton and sanders

  97. Perhaps so, but your Electoral vote tally does not compute. 380 + 191 = 571. There are only 538 Electoral votes. And it takes 270 to win.

  98. Donald Trump doesn’t have Blacks, Latinos, or Women.
    And you can’t win without ANY of those.
    And to top that off, he doesn’t have LGBTQ vote either.
    Donald Trump has the vote of low information misinformed middle aged white, Christian, straight gun owners. The vote against Donald Trump is much larger than the vote for him, even if you look at those who already voted in the primaries.
    Even if you ignore all the other candidates, and just add the votes for Cruz and Kasich, they still have more votes than Trump when added together. Which means more Republicans are voting against Trump than are voting for him.

  99. Nope, people who believe in FACTS know that people who make up stats with a 97% result based on nothing but a hunch are complete idiots.

  100. If you looked at Abraham Lincoln’s REAL record, you’d hardly uphold him as a solid Republican. In reality, he was one of the worst Presidents the USA ever had. Unless you believe the rhetoric about him instead of looking at the FACTS

  101. You’d think an American Political Science professor would pay a lot more attention as to how American politics works. He obviously isn’t looking at the Electoral College, which has Hillary out in front by 380 to 191 (even just counting the LEANING and CERTAIN votes), with 290 needed to win.
    If it’s Trump or Cruz it doesn’t matter, it’s not even close.

  102. strawman. trump is doing even better than when this conversation was started it appears he was right

  103. I.said what I needed to say…that every single point you made is incorrect. At least I have gone to the trouble to research and think beyond the bias and outright lies that you are only able to regurgitate and repeat like a frickin parrot! It’s sad that this has put you and so many others on rhe wrong side of the revolution.

  104. Why is it that Trumpites are incapable of saying anything specific, but can only answer question with a string of teenage insults?

    Seriously, grow up.

  105. ” but when you consider all of the Democrats who are voting for him,”

    Almost none.

  106. You’re the frickin’ RACIST, man…hatin’ on Donald Trump just because he’s WHITE! Save your RACIST recommendations. Trump has got this thing won already, as the analysis in the article shows. Maybe you’d understand that if your RACIST ass wasn’t so busy being such a RACIST!!! Vote against the RACISTS!! TRUMP 2016!

    RACIST!

  107. The only person a RACIST like you would try to elect would be another RACE BAITING, RACIAL PROFILING, RACE MONGERING RACIST! YOU RACIST, so deep in your RACIST ideology! How can somebody live with themselves being such a damn RACIST!!

  108. Oh my God, such a RACIST! I need counseling and reparations because this RACIST made me feel unsafe! Somebody stop his RACIST HATE SPEECH! FREE SPEECH BE DAMNED! You RACIST!!

  109. Keep dreaming! He might not have the majority of Republicans, but when you consider all of the Democrats who are voting for him, he does have the majority of AMERICA, which is what it takes to win the GENERAL election. I think you need to educate yourself about who his supporters are. He isn’t filling up football stadiums with a few angry white guys from Alabama! TRUMP 2016! Be part of the Revolution!

  110. Hey IGNUTZ-‘You have got to be tied for the world’s biggest idiot AND the world’s biggest liar at the same time! How does it feel to rise to the highest ranks on the ladder of extreme stupidity? I want to point out that EVERY SINGLE thing you said was incorrect. That kind of stupid takes talent. Have you ever thought of running for office? Have you ever thought…about ANYTHING? Trump is none of the things you said, and he WILL be the next president of the United States. The Statue of Liberty should not come down. It should stay right where it is to serve as a reminder that statues have more intellectual capacity than some of the people in this country (reference to YOU). TRUMP 2016!

  111. Without knowing who you are it is obvious to see what you are. The world is full of people like you. You are worthy of pity. When an intelligent vocabulary fails people like you, you resort to insults. I am sorry I didn’t know idiot was your last name.

  112. Just because it matched up, that wouldn’t mean those primary elections CAUSED them to win those general elections. There’s no “Home Team Advantage”.

    You can draw correlations between all kinds of thing, like world series wins and the full moon. Only a complete boob wouldn’t grasp this.

    Or do you also believe in the octopus that predicted world cup games?

  113. I think you’re thinking too small. This would be the best case scenario, among many disastrous scenarios for the GOP. Frankly, I see a non-zero chance of both parties taking a fatal blow, depending on how it all pans out.

  114. Oh look, another Republican who doesn’t know about the Southern Strategy and the end of Jim Crow.

    The GOP IS the southern democrat party now, you idiot. They have been since Nixon. You are laughably ignorant.

    The best part is that this is freely available information, found in any relevant encyclopedia, and you”ll still choose to remain ignorant.

  115. Nonsense. Your primary margin of victory doesn’t forecast general election performance. I’m sure there’s a historical correlation to be found, though even that is probably overstated, but there’s no mechanism for how one affects the other.

    It’s as silly as saying the decline in high seas piracy caused goal warming.

  116. You said it right. Our political system needs repair. Donald Trump is the American to do it.
    Today our present system politicians get elected and they forget the very people that elected them . Take the Reverned Sharpton. I read that he owes the IRS millions and won’t pay. Yet he is not in jail. The IRS won’t try to collect because of the fear of riots. In the meantime Sharpton remains a fat cat. All Americans should obey the same laws. Gen . Patreaus violate the law of confidential information to his lover that was writing his autobiography and gets demoted and railroaded. Yet the liar Clinton had a personal computer/server which was not approved by the government and she is running for President. She also lied to the American people when Sec.of State and only God knows what else. She should be going to jail. I can assure you this would not happed with Donald Trump as President. The Republican Party bosses know that if Trump gets elected their milk tit is also going to get crushed and reminded that they also work for the people that elected them.

  117. I cannot believe why the Blacks and Hispanics continue to support the Democrat party. I guess that they don’t know why the Republican Party came into exsistance. Well, let me tell you. The Democrat Party embraced slavery and wanted to keep slavery, another group wanted slavery abolished. When the Democrat party wouldn’t budge the Republican Party was born. This happened in 1854 and Abraham Lincoln became one of the first members of the Republican Party. So my Black brothers and Hispanics you keep supporting the party that wanted you as slaves. They still want you as slaves through food stamps and welfare as long as they get your vote. It is better to have a good job, dignity and self respect than food stamps and a cheese.

  118. Which really means that the odds of Donald Trump winning the election are unbeatable and he is thus the next President of the United States of America.

  119. So your arguement is about the fact I accidentally hit my cap button on my iPhone

    Good call talking statistics is probably going to be over your head.

  120. SOMEHOW i DON’T BELIEVE YOU ARE A GOOD JUDGE OF WHAT CONSTITUTES A WASTE OF TIME OOPS CAPS

  121. TOTAL BS.. Prediction Not based on Trump, details say Cruz also 97% Winner over Hillary/Sanders.. Prediction of Trump winning primary based on Super Tues ONLY, Not Convention so again BS

  122. ” And he is actually a stealth liberal who is pro open borders,”

    Ted Cruz is a stealth liberal?

    HAHAHAHAHAHA

  123. Well, one of the others was a Canadian until last year. And he is actually a stealth liberal who is pro open borders, like you, and the other one is a pro nafta, pro amnesty clown who barely won his own state and wants to grant amnesty to you and 12 million other illegals. thats just for starters my liberal psychopath friend. You should vote for Hillary and Huma and you should take ISIS refugees into your home. God bless.

  124. And what makes him more American than all of the other candidates? His greed? His narcissism? His inability to control his temper? His seething hatred of brown people?

    If Trump actually becomes President (which he won’t), you might as well tear the Statue of Liberty down. That’s how “American” he is.

  125. Americans will elect a man who stands up and says AMERICA FIRST. If we are given a chance to vote. But the ruling class elite don’t want the will of the people to win out. Ask Nancy “You’ll have to pass it in order to read what’s in it” Peloshit.

  126. Trump doesn’t even have the support of the majority of REPUBLICANS, and has never gotten 50% in any Republican primary.

    Black people will vote against him OVERWHELMINGLY. Hispanics will vote against him OVERWHELMINGLY. Women will vote against him OVERWHELMINGLY. To win, he’ll need at least 70% of the white vote, and that’s pretty much impossible.

    I actually think the nomination of Trump will spell the end of the Tea Party, the loss will be so total. It will be like what McGovern’s loss did to the ’60s counterculture. After this, the Republicans will still be around, but the Tea Party will cease to have any influence on them. The GOP will regard them as noxious poison.

    And they, of course, will split into smaller and smaller groups as they fight among themselves for who is to blame.

  127. “Well, since I can just talk to myself and my family”

    …and that’s how your clueless white privilege keeps you uninformed and bigoted.

    are you afraid to talk to POC and Latinos, to find out why they support Democrats? I’m guessing you are. your fear is why people like drumpf have you by the place where your balls should be.

  128. Well, since I can just talk to myself and my family. We are voting for Trump because he is the only one that is standing up for minorities.

    Democrats keep minorities poor, broke, and stupid so they will vote for them. Sadly, most minorities don’t understand they are being played that the party democratic party.

    Trump is going the end the cycle so that we can be part of society, like everyone else.

    Vote for Trump- Vote for your freedom, start your new business.

  129. Lmao

    Sure except a lot of republicans won’t vote for trump no matter what

    And democrats will turnout to vote against him

  130. Because it’s too small to be statistically significant plus it has not been tested

    You can find all types of trends in historical data

    I’m sure you could look at weather and pick an area and use it to predict pat elections as well

    It would not mean the weather predicted it

  131. lol!

    yes, so nervous! I’m certain that Latinos, women and POC will suddenly flock to the party that despises them.

    #SOINCREASINGLYNERVOUS

  132. it feels great knowing that we won’t see another repug POTUS elected for a generation, or more: the demographic tide has turned.

  133. ok. lets see it. lets see the weather pattern that predicts the election for the past 50 years.

    still haven’t found it?

    keep trying!

  134. instead of explaining why a sample size of 25 is not enough, you tell us “I’m a statistician”

    lol and I’m marco polo

  135. the model is completely fine

    it would be 100% certainty if JFK had not won in 1960

    are you saying hillary is as groundbrekaing and charismatic as JFK? lol

  136. “a minimum 97 percent chance of winning the general election”

    Minimum 97%?

    The prof could at least make his BS less obvious. Only someone who knows nothing about statistics would come up with a percentage that high, and not instinctively recognize that it must mean there was something wrong with the model.

  137. I recommend you talk to some black and Latino people, ask them why they support Democrats over you racists. you might learn something, but I doubt it.

  138. Blacks and Hispanics are done being toys of the Democratic Party. They are people too. Trump is the liberator. Making Americans great again. They never have to be the gimme dat people anymore.

  139. none of us will see another repug POTUS in our lifetimes: the demographic tide has turned. you can’t win without POC and Latinos.

  140. I just LOVE how politically correct people, of all parties, are so overly concerned with the feelings of CRIMINALS and protective of criminals, the bad guys, that they are willing to sacrifice innocent’s blood, pain and suffering. They are even willing to sacrifice justice and DEMOCRACY and the very FABRIC that IS AMERICA. They say BLM is excused and valid to kill cops because they are social justice warriors, fighting the good fight against all whites who are racist. Muslim Terrorists are excused to kill and maim and behead because Israel occupies disputed land and America attacked them in wars. Trans sex criminals and illegal sex criminals are excused of committing crimes because they are unfortunate, poor, misunderstood and stigmatized… after all, Liberals argue, “they just want to be normal citizens with rights.” Well trannies are NOT NORMAL and using legislation in attempt to normalize them is like using laws to force people to do anything, it just makes things EXPENSIVE for every tax payer and complicates things and makes things WORSE. THIS IS WHAT LIBERALS AND PRO GOV people do not get: GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE ANSWER. Lawlessness is not an answer to America’s problems. Calling out the truth, seeing Right from wrong, COMMON SENSE, law abiding citizens ARE THE ANSWER. Illegals are called ILLEGAL for a reason: they are criminals who should NOT be here and are a danger to every American. We have no way of knowing if they have a criminal record or diseases or are terrorists or what. A country without a border is NOT a country. HOW can those opposed to a closed border and BLM being labelled a terrorist group argue that the way things are is GOOD? Cops do not deserve to die because of one or 2 are bad. THAT IS BIGOTRY AND HATE CRIME & M U R D E R. BLM is not the judicial branch of the USA, however much OBAMA, Beyonce et al would like them to be! WAKE UP AMERICA. The media IS NOT YOUR FRIEND, THEY DO NOT HAVE YOUR BEST INTEREST AT HEART. THE MEDIA IS NOT I REPEAT NOT WHO TO LISTEN TO in political matters. The media is bought & paid for by the special interest corporations that WANT TO KEEP their power over the masses. They do this through paying off politicians for specal favors. This is why the GOP never even TRIED to defeat Obamacare, mass immigration, etc etc. WAKE UP! They control nearly ALL the outlets and have brainwashed the general public masses dopes into believing the most important thing is to be NON OFFENSIVE, to be hip and have the latest gadgets, to look like everyone else and talk and vote like everyone else. WAKE UP! YOU ARE PUPPETS! WHY……? They want your money! They want you to feel you just gotta have the latest iPHONE, they want you to believe them when they tell you WHO IS SUITABLE to be President and who is not. This is not based on anything that is valid, it is all based on feelings and soft issues.Our country is in the toilet. Our economy, debt, joblessness is BEYOND DISASTAROUS. They are lying to you when they say everything if peachy keen and the most important thing is to keep the status quo with corrupt politicians who DO NOT WANT TO GIVE POWER TO THE PEOPLE, CORRUPT POLITICIANS WHO BLAH BLAH BLAH TALK TALK BUT NEVER tackle REAL problems such as the budget deficit, job loss through poor trade deals and illegal immigration and worldwide terrorism. GOD BLESS AMERICA GOD BLESS TRUMP.

  141. IT ONLY MAKES SENSE DEMOCRATS ARE DOWN VOTING BY 35% AND REPUBLICANS ARE WAY UP! TRUMP IS GOING TO WIN HE WILL BE AN AMAZING PRES NOBODY WILL OWN HIM AND HE WILL DO THE RIGHT THING. HE BUILT AN AMAZING BUSINESS WILL MAKE AMERICA SO GREAT!

  142. Good god that was erious liberal cucked regurjitation righ there..Hillary is a Criminal that WILL be in Prison soon. She certainly wont be the next President, and if you think she is then you are delusional. Also, no one cares about you Hillary, no one Trusts you and frankly I really dont think anyone would miss you if you died..Go home Hillary, you lost, you vapid cow.

  143. Secretary Clinton helped restore America’s leadership and standing in the world during a time of global challenges and changes.

    Secretary Clinton made personal appearances in 112 countries, as she tried to repair the damage done to our nation by 8 years of failed foreign policy under Cheney and his sidekick, Bush.

    Secretary Clinton unveiled the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative.

    Secretary Clinton advocated an expanded role in global economic issues for the State Department and cited the need for an increased U.S. diplomatic presence, especially in Iraq, where the Defense Department had conducted diplomatic missions.

    Secretary Clinton, through high-level and last-minute acts of diplomacy, got the two sides back to the table, when the signing of the Turkish-Armenian accord threatened to unravel.

    Secretary Clinton, through back channel negotiations, was responsible for the initiation of diplomatic talks with Iran over their nuclear program.

    Secretary Clinton built and maintained a coalition to enact the toughest sanctions in Iran’s history.

    Secretary Clinton re-established ties with Russia via Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which greatly improved US/Russian relations until Putin took office.

    Secretary Clinton played an integral role in the New START Treaty with Russia.

    Secretary introduced ambitious reform with the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.

    Secretary Clinton initiated the Women in Public Service Project, a joint venture between the State Department and the Seven Sisters colleges. The goal was to entice more women into entering public service, such that within four decades an equal number of men and women would be working in the field

    Secretary Clinton, in 2010, announced a partnership with the United Nations Foundation to provide some 100 million stoves around the world within the next ten years, and in subsequent travels she urged foreign leaders to adopt policies encouraging their use.

    Secretary Clinton went on Pakistani TV to diplomatically repair the US image in that country. The renewed diplomacy contributed to the hunt for and eventual execution of Osama bin Ladin.

    Secretary Clinton helped avert war in Gaza by negotiating a ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians.

    Secretary Clinton, in March 2009, overrode VP Biden in an initiative to send in 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.

    Secretary Clinton played a role in bringing one war to an end and planning for the end of another.

    Secretary Clinton, Jan ’10, essentially called out China in a speech and defined our technology war on the internet openly. It was the first time the internet had ever been mentioned in the framework of international diplomacy.

    Secretary Clinton was the one who expanded the State Dept’s use of social media in order to reach out & empower others to a level such that people in crisis countries could then use it as an instrument of change within their governments. This had a huge impact… if not the sole catalyst… for the Arab Spring.

    Secretary Clinton was thrust into the forefront of the “Arab Spring” and played a key role in negotiating & navigating diplomatic pressures to accomplish US goals.

    Secretary Clinton was a key in overcoming internal administration opposition to military action in Libya and she used her influence with our allies to keep pressure on the Libyan rebels to overthrow Gaddafi.

    Secretary Clinton gave a speech in 2011 before the UN Human Rights Council regarding LGBT rights on a global scale. “Gay rights are human rights”.

    Secretary Clinton was critical in America’s “pivot to Asia” strategy.

    Secretary Clinton was the first Sec. of State to visit Burma since 1955, supporting democratic reforms there.

    Secretary Clinton elevated the cause of women’s rights to new heights. Hilary’s constant pressure, on a global scale, regarding women’s rights issues saw the entire world make HUGE changes in regards to how women are treated in many nations, most especially in the education of girls and women.

    Secretary Clinton was the first Secretary of State to ever implement the “smart power” approach toward US diplomacy matters… asserting US leadership and values on a global scale by combining military “hard” power with US “soft” power of global economics, development aid, technology, creativity, and human rights advocacy.

  144. With all the data we have today it easy to find data that appear to predict past events

    The thing is that most of the time it’s a coincidence

  145. you are right, if the model had a history of being predictive, as this appeared to be. not the only factor, mind you.

  146. like I said u can find weather patterns that determine elections 100% of the time over last 50 years

    Wud the weather determine your opinion lol

  147. Reagan was down by 25% at one point (this point?). This professor’s model will hold true in November.

  148. Lmao u are replying after Rubio left the race

    And Cruz has picked up a lot of the establishment vote even if he is an outsider just bc the establishment wants to stop trump from getting the majority

  149. You ignore the fact that the 1960 election was stolen by Kennedy through the Chicago vote. No doubt, Clinton will attempt to steal this one.

  150. He probably created a mathematical model based on the primaries of 2008, (and predicted a winner for 2008). He then tested his model on prior elections to see if it was accurate, and seen it worked. The reason it didn’t work in 1960 (I’m guessing) is because of something most politicians weren’t prepared for, and that was televised debates. JFK won an upset victory over Nixon because nobody realized how important TV and body language would be in electing someone, but now they know… and every politician is prepared for it now. The same goes for social media in this election cycle and future election cycles, the only thing is, Trump is actually the only one prepared for it… and not only is he prepared, he’s changing the way elections will be won in the future. But anyway, the scientist predicted his winner in 2008 and 2012 and had it right.

  151. He still had the winning candidate correct, and that’s all he is saying.. and he has Trump winning by a lot, so there’s much room for error.

  152. Splitting the establishment vote? There’s only one establishment candidate left and he is doing horrible…. don’t be a fool. There’s NO WAY you have an MBA.

  153. Hillary is not a good candidate.She is facing an FBI investigation for the emails and even worse a public corruption investigation.150 FBI agents assigned would be at a level only assigned to a crimanl mob case.Yet they keep saying she’s going to do fine.In addition, she has been in politics her entire career and cannot avoid things like foreign policy, economic problems, trade and failure to protect our serviceman at Benghazi.What has she done? Nothing good for country plenty good for herself and family.

  154. Peoples opinions are not skewing things

    That’s what’s actually happening

    That’s like saying almost nobody liked Jeb bush that skewed the reasults

  155. Do you understand we have a heated Republican Primary fight & #NeverTrump BS going around that is skewing the polls up?

  156. And yet all people want to hear is “Me good – You bad” so no one listens. This desire to live in reality bubbles where facts and lies are selectively embraced based on how they appeal to our base desires, where we can pretend that we are perfect and all problems are someone else’s responsibility, is what has allowed the present situation.

  157. Yea neither party seems to care right now lol

    And I wonder why all the legitimate polls agree trump has little to no chance in a general

  158. Do you understand most polls are bought and paid for then disseminated via the bought and paid for media to drive a political narrative? If the elites in both parties actually thought Trump would lose the general election they would embrace him in order to bring in so many new voters. But they know he’d win and intends to clean house when he does. That means he has to be prevented from becoming the nominee. That’s why they are backing the most obnoxious member of their team, Cruz. The donor class in both parties don’t care who wins as long as it’s not someone who will actually try to make real changes.

  159. Sam:
    Yes, you have a point. Predicting a data set with that same data set is not scientifically acceptable. My point is that it IS mathematically acceptable. Math is just a tool, and the scientist has to know to use it. The scientific problem is that the predictive validity of the math model would not be known until it is applied to a different data set. That’s what I meant about using math models to ‘fill in the blanks’. A good math model should fill in those blanks accurately, wherever they are in time.

    Predicting the past is OK, since that’s different data set. One common method is to use a ‘split half sample’. Take the existing data, and randomly split it into two data sets. Develop the model on one data set, and test it on the other data set.

    A more sophisticated method is to randomly select ten data sets. Then take 1/10 of the data to make the model, and test it on the other nine. There are also ’round robin’ methods, that are done by making 10 models, and testing them on one of the data sets that were not used to make each model. Lots of fun, and it gives a good idea about how robust the model is. If all the models are similar, with similar predictive power on the other data sets, then the model is pretty robust.

    But as I said in another comment, the first thing that jumps out, before doing any math, is that after a two-term president finishes, a candidate from the other party is usually elected president. That’s not just random chance, because if you ask the electorate who they will vote for, and why, many say that they are fed up with the current party in power.

  160. That is exactly why the RNC is trying so hard to derail Trump from getting the Republican nomination. They have a pretty good idea of what would happen next.

  161. Mathematical models can be used to predict the past if the data used in making the model isn’t a part of the prediction. For example, if I use the last 20 years of data to predict something that happened 100 years ago, that’s fine. I can’t use the last 20 years of data to predict what happened in the last 20 years.

  162. Why r u avoiding the issue that u references two sources both proved you wrong and you have presented zero evidence to support your arguement

    Lmao

    Let me guess it’s that media changing the definitions right
    Lol

  163. Upvotes lmao

    All those mean is that u post on pages like minded ppl go

    But let’s go over the fact tell me what below is wrong

    U tell me I need websters dictionary

    I give u the websters dedinition which proves me right and you wrong

    You then say only part is good and you ignore the party that proves you wrong

    Then u provide your own definition

    But when I ask for the definition of democracy from that source u have to admit that dictionary proves you wrong

    Now u say u know better then all the dictionaries and Thomas Jefferson

    Correct ?
    Lmao

  164. I don’t use the word. Like the term “liberal” before it the term “conservative” has been co-opted by a myriad of people to the point where what it means depends on who is using it. Conservatism is the label that the Republican Party elite apply to their chosen candidate. For a Democrat it is everything that they are against. For most people who claim it defines their beliefs it expresses their desire to make their own decisions about their lives and the disposition of the product of their labor.
    This makes conservatives and liberal nearly identical as when looking at how a society can be structured as both groups want to live in a type three society
    1) a society where people exist for the benefit of the state = totalitarian.
    2) a society where the state and the majority of the people exist for the benefit of a few = oligarchy.
    3) a society where the state exists for the benefit of the people = a free state (and this broadly represents grassroots Conservative and Liberal ideals – they are shades of each other)
    Both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party perpetuate an oligarchy while playing those who want to live in a number three off against each other with straw man arguments about what benefits, and how much benefits, and who should pay for the benefits when the reality is that the only people benefiting from this society are those at the top. For everyone else it’s about how much you’re allowed to keep from the product of your labor. The thing about oligarchies is that they impose one way limits on social mobility so that the more successful they are the fewer members are in the oligarchy until eventually the system has become totalitarian. THe USA is well on it’s way to totalitarianism and everyone outside of the country can see that.
    I think any system of government can be made to work if it is not corrupt. Oligarchies tend towards corruption because it is a useful tool in entrenching the power of the oligarchy. Totalitarian societies tend towards corruption because there is no reason not to. Free societies require mass education and constant debate and refinement of ideas to keep from sliding down to a two and then to a one.
    The other side is incompetence. When the people at the top of a society never have to justify or defend their ideas (as we have here with meaningless labels representing easy off the shelf political consumer identity) they never have to refine those ideas either. It kills creativity and insures that every solution on offer is at best woefully outdated. Even if the people in charge wanted to solve a problem they are professionally committed to perpetuating the problems because the problems in turn perpetuate their power. It’s why Bush Jr’s tax reform panel was prohibited from considering tax reform and so only ever met once. It’s why Obama’s jobs panel was prohibited from actually considering things that could increase the quantity and quality of jobs and so only ever met once.
    The twin pillars of corruption and incompetence are all that are holding this country up.

  165. Im a fool? You’ve got 2000 comments and 550 votes?
    You’re a pathetic fu cking troll who has zero knowledge about the countries history or even proper definitions of political terms.
    I definitely have the right definition.

  166. Jefferson called America a democracy lmao was he using the modern term

    Lmao and u provide a definition for republic from a source the prove u wrong about a democracy lol

    Even with u crazy made up rules the Senate is elected by popular vote that’s a democracy

    Just grow a pair and admit u were wrong

  167. Then why did u tell me websters

    Why do u think you have the right definition lmao

    Such a fool

  168. I wasn’t nitpicking in the least- the b definition is incorrect for a proper democracy.

  169. Their definition matches the b part of yours, BUT they are both “modern” definitions so to speak- I guess I can’t really call it inaccurate at that point. But with the way nominations are setup on at least the Dem side of the fence of all groups the people don’t actually have a vote because of the way they game the delegates and superdelegates.
    Article 4 section 4 of the Constitution prescribes that “the United
    States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of
    Government.”
    That’s just the first example I could find in the Constitution- I cannot find the mention of the word “Democracy” in there but it may be somewhere.

  170. Which follows websters definition of a democracy

    Where did u get your definition ?

    Let’s see how they define democracy

  171. LOL- no its not.

    A republic (from Latin: res publica) is a sovereign state or country which is organized with a form of government in which power resides in elected individuals representing the citizen body and government leaders exercise power according to the
    rule of law.

  172. Here is websters
    1
    a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority
    b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

    How dumb do you feel right now lmao

  173. Wrong- the US is a REPUBLIC- go ahead and say the pledge to yourself real slow and get back to me.
    Democracy is exactly what I said. You need to check Webster’s man.

  174. democracy definition. A system of government in which power is vested in the people, who rule either directly or through freely elected representatives. Note: Democratic institutions, such as parliaments, may exist in a monarchy.

  175. That’s not true

    The us is a representative democracy

    Jefferson and many other founding fathers call America a democracy

    Plus what u said is not the definition of a democracy

    U just have these pretend idea in your head

  176. A democracy would take each citizens vote specifically and elect the candidate who ended up with the most actual votes.
    A democracy would also give you a vote in every law, general decision, and appointment made in the country. Mob rule at its finest.
    In a representative republic people elect representatives to go vote for them. This is what we have had since day 1.
    We do not live in a democracy and never have.

  177. The United States has NEVER been a democracy….its been a representative republic since day 1.
    You’re pretty entertaining yourself for a leftist.

  178. So u don’t think America has ever been a democracy ? But u love being an American

    Lmao u are entertaining I’ll give u that

  179. When we first started electing people into public office, if I had to guess maybe Roman times?

  180. WTF would that solve? I’m not sitting here bashing the US- I’m bashing the corrupt media and gov’t.

    I’m a proud US citizen I’m just not ignorant to the blatantly obvious dishonesty that goes on on both sides of the political fence.

  181. Yea they are and the machines are setup accordingly for the desired result.

    It doesn’t matter how the people vote, it only matters who counts the votes- J. Stalin

    If voting mattered they would let us do it- Mark Twain.
    ETC…

  182. And u keep pretending the media own everything they don’t

    Like you keep sayin media media media are u trying to call out a certain group of ppl

  183. The republicans agenda lmao and they have trump losing

    I think that why fox skews GOP and is more inaccurate the Gallup and cnn Etc but they all are usually in the same range.

    All those polls have trump far behind

    And why do the elections reasults consistently reflect the polls

  184. The numbers are posted before the election.

    How can they draw it up?

    What r you trying to say ?

  185. Yes Gerrymandering is reshaping of borders- which calls by the pollsters can whichever district happens to have the voting block they are looking for.

    95 percent of US media is owned by 6 companies- that info was in the first link I put up.
    Fox is owned by one of those companies- who’s agenda do you think fox would be pushing?
    Certainly you don’t believe fox is pushing the truth do you?

  186. Its all part of the show to keep the ignorant sheep ignorant.
    The numbers could be drawn up to read anything they want and no one would know the difference.

  187. And Gerrymandering is the reshaping of borders. Polls don’t draw borders.

    You are saying they skew their sample which they don’t and u can read about their methodology if u actually want to know the truth

    But it seems u are afraid of the truth

    You probably thing fox is in on it too showing trump behind

  188. Then why r they consistently accurate?

    The polls specifically poll a sample that reflects the populationGo read any polls methodology and see

    And what do you think all these polls are conspiring together and just so happen to consistently be right ?

  189. The polls are Gerrymandered just like the voting districts are. The pollsters go to the people they want to get the approved answer from.

  190. U don’t think it’s a problem that u say it’s the same ppl but you don’t know who they are?

  191. Who r these same mfers
    Is it a certain group u r trying to talk about ?

    And why are the polls consistently right?

  192. This site does not allow direct linking in their comment section. And yes, I actually graduated high school when they taught education.
    The same mfers that own the media own pretty much all aspects of info presented by the media which would definitely include Gallup.
    Its obvious you’re just a troll and don’t like what the links have to say- and rather than refute them because you can’t- you call the links fake and make a plss poor insult.

  193. Lmao is a group of 200 ppl

    What r u saying the ppl who own Gallup cud have been in the same group as the ppl from a media station

    Did u even graduate high school?

  194. Lol you don’t know who but u are saying it lmao someone is fos

    And those links are fake

  195. They’re active after the link is fixed. I just pulled them off of their respective pages when I posted the comment.
    Remove the (DOT) and add a .

  196. Honestly I dunno which corporate beast owns Gallup- But here’s a link to the media owners who indirectly run Gallup and the other polls.
    http://www.businessinsider(DOT)com/this-chart-shows-the-bilderberg-groups-connection-to-everything-in-the-world-2012-6

    and another that shows how they’re all connected

    http://www.businessinsider(DOT)com/this-chart-shows-the-bilderberg-groups-connection-to-everything-in-the-world-2012-6
    You’ll have to take my DOT out and replace with a proper one.

  197. The media station doesn’t own Gallup- the people who own the media station own Gallup.

  198. Michael:
    I agree, one must have some understanding of what this mathematical predictive model is doing, before one critiques it.

    Upon first look, it appears that a lot of variance can be explained by an opposite party prediction. That is, in most cases, when a president finishes his second term, the next president is elected from the opposing party. That pattern is so common, that it’s likely that it will happen again in this case.

    The events that transpire in the primaries can explain more variance, but not much. Most of the variance is explained by the pattern of alternating parties. I does look likely that if Trump is nominated, he will win.

  199. Very little of the patriot act is still Leagal .

    What part of the patriot act are u even referring to

  200. The Patriot Act has everything to do with what is being reported by the media, who in turn happen to be the people who report the poll results.

    They are accurate because the same company that controls the polls, controls the voting machines- either directly or indirectly.

  201. Lmao

    What does the patriot act have to do with polls ?

    And why are the accurate in predicting most election days in the primaries now and in 2012?

  202. Gallen:
    What is your definition of US conservatism? What are conservatives like? What are their goals and principles? I’m serious, I would like to hear your views.

  203. Nothing the msm reports on is trustworthy, polls are bought and paid for, etc…just like the diebold voting machines.
    You must have missed the part of the new Patriot Act where it allows the gov to use the media to push whatever agenda they like.

  204. Lol yep they were so wrong in 2012 and they have been so wrong showing trump ahead in all the states he won

    What r u talking about ?

  205. What states do u see him ahead that r taken in last 3 months ?

    I see Clinton way ahead

  206. You put words in my mouth. I was talking about the situation now. How did you jump to “open borders” and “unlimited immigration”?

    If there are no jobs here for them than they won’t stay.

    You are against that? Please tell me how many heads of construction companies you’ve called out to their faces on hiring illegal aliens?

    I suppose “illegals” (You never say “illegal aliens” or “undocument workers”) is code for Latinos?

    You talked about taxpayers paying for care, etc. I assume then that I’ve paid for some because I’m a taxpayer. Why won’t you let the people that just want to work for a living be on the books and then be taxpayers as well?

    Freedom, justice, liberty, civil rights are all liberal ideology. The enemies of liberal ideology are the enemies of freedom.

  207. Now I get it. You want open borders, unlimited immigration, and legal status for anyone that comes here.

    Imagine the “benefit” to the US when 20 or 30 million “undocumented Americans” come here. I am sure there will be jobs for all of them because there are just so many Americans who will not do that work.

    And for the record, I am against any US business hiring illegals.

    WE DO NOT NEED immigration reform. We need to enforce the laws we already have. “Immigration reform” to all you open border weasels is nothing more than liberal code for amnesty.

    And I notice you refuse to answer the question, so I will say it for the last time: how many illegals you house, clothe, care for, feed, provide healthcare for, and pay tuition?

    But you and I both know the answer. You are so blinded by your disgusting gutter liberal ideology, you cannot fathom American sovereignty, and the rule of our laws.

  208. Illegal aliens accept those low wages out of desperation. If low wages is the problem, why aren’t you going after the employers paying those low wages instead?

    If those illegal aliens were legal, then they’d be taxpayers instead of people off the book. And that “eligible to vote” is just flat out wrong since non-citizens can’t vote.

    You’re the one preventing the immigration reform that could get these workers on the books and be taxpayers.

  209. You don’t get it.

    Illegal aliens are a net DRAIN on the economy. You think they take jobs American’s don’t want. WRONG. They take jobs Americans will not do at the low wages the illegals will accept.

    All you need to do is look at the construction trade. I have a friend that rebuilt his house because of Hurricane Sandy. I spent a lot of time there. Virtually his entire block was rebuilt. Guess what? Most of the construction workers were illegals. The contractors love them because they work cheap.

    And the illegals send their money home and do not pay taxes off their off-the-books wages. And even worse, they are eligible for welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, and free healthcare. In many states, they get driver’s licenses. In some places, they are eligible to vote! (ridiculous) And there are many politicians that want to give the illegals in-state college tuition, a benefit not available to Americans.

    So I keep asking you how many illegals you house, clothe, care for, feed, provide healthcare for, and pay tuition. I keep asking because millions of taxpayers are tired of footing the bill. You want to pay for them? Go right ahead. Leave my tax dollars out of it.

  210. Well, pretty excited comments!
    If it’s impossible to use math to predict the past, then the entire man-made global warming theory is unproved. The mathematical climate models are about 20 years old. They predict the past quite well, but not the future. The earth’s climate has cooled for 18 years.

  211. I did.
    I was born in this country, raised by atheist communist and I dared embrace the religion of Islam over 20 years ago.
    I was under the impression then that religion was something Americans had the freedom to choose for themselves.
    Be careful, some of us have the impression that freedom to chose your own religion is a cherished right in this country.
    Allahu Akbar means God is Greater (as in God is greater than anything you can imagine).
    Peace

  212. I will ask again, why are you fixated on that when the issue is the jobs the illegal immigrants have and their role in the economy?

  213. You got mental problems. Nobody is playing. You’re way over your head. You can’t even use your real name. The first sign of inadequacy and the imminent parade of meaningless points combined with the courage of poultry. Anything you say or think isn’t worth squat.

  214. Go back in your hole and leave us alone, OK? If you come up with something better than ad hominem attacks and superficial analysis, you can try again.

    Thanks for playing.

  215. If you feel he is none of those things, go ahead, vote for the man, with a clear conscience.

  216. I know I guess I can’t help trying. I mostly do this to just save the dumbest comments and show them to ppl

  217. I will ask again. How many illegal aliens to you care for? How many live in your house? How many to you feed, clothe, and provide healthcare for?

    Because if say none, than you not part of the problem, you ARE the problem.

  218. Don’t split hairs. You clearly imply that he is all three of those
    buzzwords, and that people shouldn’t vote for him for these reasons. And
    they’re all pure leftist fiction. Trump hasn’t said anything against any
    particular race, against either sex, or against homosexuals. Feel free
    to prove me wrong, provide an actual quote of his. You can’t because he isn’t anywhere near as edgy as the left likes to pretend.

    At the end of the day you just
    don’t like him because he’s not on the political “team” you cheer for.
    He has stated that he’s against political correctness and he questions
    some wars that the left has had to defend for years because they still
    view Obama as one of theirs and so they have to defend what he is doing.
    And what he is doing is waging war over oil in the Middle East worse
    than G.W.Bush ever did. Wow, so progressive.

  219. Don’t split hairs. You clearly imply that he is all three of those buzzwords, and that people shouldn’t vote for him for these reasons. And they’re all pure leftist fiction. Trump hasn’t said anything any particular race, against women or men, or against homosexuals. Feel free to prove me wrong, provide an actual quote of his. You can’t because he didn’t say anything of that nature. At the end of the day you just don’t like him because he’s not on the political “team” you cheer for. He has stated that he’s against political correctness and he questions some wars that the left has had to defend for years because they still view Obama as one of theirs and so they have to defend what he is doing. And what he is doing is waging war over oil in the Middle East worse than G.W.Bush ever did. Wow, so progressive.

  220. And when we’ve “electrified” everything the energy will be clean because it comes out of the wall, right? God damn it, hippie, the only reliable “renewable” energy at this point is nuclear. You want all power to be produced by nuclear facilities? Do you think our ridiculous power consumption can be satisfied with wind and solar? Absurd. We’ll be using fossil until it runs out and when it does we are entering an energy crisis.
    Also, you won’t live to see a plane that doesn’t burn some resource midflight. Should we equip planes with mini-reactors?

  221. Lets see. The Yanks control an estimated 3500 Nuclear weapons.
    … The Yanks have about 6 full fleets comprised of about two super aircraft carriers each. A single aircraft carrier is as powerful in military terms as the entire 8th Air Force of WWII. And they have all types of vessels capable of taking out whole navies.
    … The Yanks have enormous fleets of jet fighters and bombers. they have the most powerful technically advanced airforce in the world. I don’t give a crap what Putin says.
    …. Now that power in the hands of Trump? Now you understand why the world is scared.

  222. You’re trying to pitch something to the predictably stupid. These people even defy simple logic.

    ‘No one can predict, past events.’

    If you can’t get that, the value of any discussion is pointless.

  223. The reason everyone (every Republican that is) defends this guy is that they are either: uneducated, or very slow mentally or incapable of objective thinking.

    There is a basic point of logic that Grade School kids understand. ‘You cannot predict a recorded past event.’

    Also this guy is using the old Roma fortune telling trick. You tell people that you predicted this over a year ago. Very few people actually take the time and patience to check it out.

  224. Something you lack. Something that Machievelli noted as very important. Its something you cannot quantify or measure.

    CHARISMA

  225. I agree, planes are the most difficult to electrify – they are the highest hanging fruit. But there is low hanging fruit – cars, coal-power. Technology is moving fast, and by the time we have electrified and made renewable the easy stuff, the hard stuff will be doable.

  226. Huh? I’ve never been to China. My last flight was in 2014.
    Last night, 5 adults (me, wife, in-laws, step-son) squeezed into an electric Nissan Leaf to make a half hour journey to attend an awards night. We could have driven the bigger Subaru (which now only gets used when the Leaf doesn’t have the range), but we do our best to minimise emissions.

  227. I suggested they should vote for a non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobe. I left it up to the readers/voters to decide if Trump fit the bill.

  228. Nobody said anything about communism. I’m a strong believer in markets – government involvement is always the last resort (though occasionally unavoidable, such as the need to put a price on carbon pollution).
    At least we can agree on one thing – religion is bad. It’s hard enough getting everybody on the same page when we stick to seeing what’s actually there.

  229. Did he create the model prior to 1912? Or did he use data to create a model, then say that his model predicted the data he used to create the model? Very poor science.

  230. *eyeroll* Those are just stupid chain letters. Real secret service agents don’t give accounts of their charges. If there was anything to those old, debunked stories, there would have been major investigations into the Secret Service by Congress, as such nonsense puts those they protect at risk by making them think they can’t trust the Secret Service.

    It’s one of the dumber accusations against Clinton (which is saying a LOT), and it says a lot about you that you think it’s “proof” of anything.

    And yes, I do think “true Conservatives” will sit this one out. Clinton is a center-left Democrat. Not who’d they prefer, but whatever. Trump is a threat to the Constitution itself, and to our very system of government. The choice between them is pretty clear (if you’re sane and intelligent).

  231. Wow, that sounds like a totally made-up number (20% of Sanders voters picking Trump), one that will be even sillier once Bernie endorses Clinton and campaigns for her.

    Nor is your read of the electorate even sane: Trump hatred is so widespread that a MAJORITY of the GOP said they wouldn’t be satisfied if he was the nominee, with unprecedentedly huge majorities of Democrats saying they view him unfavorably as well. Large numbers of prominent GOP folks have already announced they would vote for Clinton over Trump, or would stay home.

    Trump may unite the American electorate, but against him.

  232. Dude can’t even get most Republicans to say they’re ok with him being the candidate. The chances of him having a landslide are essentially zero.

  233. If only there was a way to find out… Oh, wait, there is. Try Googling, “obama worldwide approval rating”. You’ll see there that, outside of a few countries like Russia, Venezuela, and North Korea, Obama is widely respected and liked around the world, getting particularly high marks in Europe, Africa, and most of East Asia. As a rule, the only countries that give him less than 50% approval ratings are countries with whose governments use anti-American propaganda (so he’s not unpopular for being Obama, but for being the POTUS): Argentina, China, Palestine, Pakistan, etc. or where a pro-American government is widely distrusted by the people (Jordan, for example).

    The main exception seems to be on climate change, where the rest of the world has started to lose patience with Obama’s inability to get anything that would mitigate climate change past the GOP Congress.

  234. Trump doesn’t call Mexicans rapists. Can’t take you seriously when you twist people’s words to fit an obvious agenda.

  235. And you also recently took the plane from Australia to Ireland and back! Well, can’t say you didn’t at least try to cause global warming all by yourself. “WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CO2!!!” Carl Raymond S, posting from my iPhone on a plane

  236. I’m sure living a jet set lifestyle between Australia and China helps lower CO2 massively, you obnoxious hypocrit.

  237. Holy shit, these liberal filter bubble opinions. Implying that Trump is “racist”, “sexist” and “homophobe”, and you don’t even feel the need to back any of those pathetic ad hominems up! And you think Angela Merkel commands respect – wooow. I’m from Germany and let me tell you, an “inverse Angela Merkel” is the best president any American could hope for. If that’s Trump they should all vote for Trump.

  238. You believe in unicorns, too?
    I was raised by communist hypocrites, but I repeat myself.
    Sorry, I dont fantasize about communism as you do, any longer.
    World peas?
    Yeah, I am for world peas.
    Muslim for Trump
    Make America great again

  239. Yes I was able to find that. If you only look at the reputable polls that are taken in the last month Clinton is way ahead of trump.

    you have to look at the date of the poll and which poll it is. Many of those polls were unknown polls with republican bias. If you look at those small polls nation polls they have trump ahead while even fox has Clinton 5 or more point ahead

    And even if you counted those polls Clinton is ahead

  240. Google “(any state name) Trump vs Clinton poll”, and it will take you to a RealClear Politics page with the polls.

  241. I am talking about the claim that the accuracy of this model at predicting outcomes using past data, so I am not sure about your point.

  242. Your post sort of refutes the logic of attempting to develop a standardized model.

  243. I’m voting for Hillary, but actually, if you go to “270 to Win” and fill in the map with the latest polling, Trump is ahead 287-251. Obviously, that will change with time but this election is not one to take for granted.

  244. There was this little event that happened – the financial meltdown of 2008. Any Democratic candidate would have won by a larger-than-predicted margin.

  245. You actually had to ask why “ban a group of people, many of whom want to kill us” is bigotry…

    Using illegal immigrants as a scapegoat for the country’s troubles is pandering to bigotry. Trump emphasizes their nationality more than anything else. The issue is not feeding or clothing them , it’s the jobs they do here. Jobs that people have tried to get US residents to do but they would not take even when unemployment was high. Any solution to the illegal immigration problem needs to conform to reality; instead Trump offers this wall to focus hate mongering.

  246. How is wanting to temporarily ban a group of people, many of whom want to kill us, an example of bigotry?

    How is keeping out people that do not belong in this country an example of bigotry?

    I have another question. How many illegal aliens to you care for? How many live in your house? How many to you feed, clothe, and provide healthcare for?

    Wait…none? Then you must be a bigot too. A hypocritical bigot.

  247. I probably would stop breathing if it solved the problem and delivered my kids a planet a with a future. Unfortunately, fossil fuel usage is the (primary) problem, so I’d rather devote my best efforts to tackling that.

  248. I would rather go back to your first comment. Bugger off convict. We don’t comment about Turnbull, and we don’t need an Aussie to denigrate our next President. You want to help solve the CO2 “problem?” Stop breathing. The world will thank you.

  249. The problem, is that the CO2 generated by the USA, won’t stay there – we can’t put you in glass bubble. If every bus in China goes electric (they’re at half a million, and counting), it benefits not a jot if every bus in the USA is diesel.

  250. Do you really not think you could develope a model that accurate based on weather data. We have a insane about of data today. You can find any trend you want. A sample size of 25 is not even close to enough.

    I’m a statistician. That is not close to statistically significant for a sample size

  251. Excellent. So what’s the problem? Enjoy your life in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and you won’t have to busybody worry yourself over what the miserable Yanks are up to.

  252. So, I’ve done some digging and the LAST two times HeLLmuth made a prediction he was OFF

    In 2012 he said that Obama would get 53.2 percent of the two-party vote and Romney would get 46.8 percent. ACTUAL numbers were 51.1% and 47.2%. which comes to 51.98% and 48.02% when adjust to a two-party vote, ignoring all the other parties.
    www. washingtonpost. com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/31/forecasting-the-election-most-models-say-obama-will-win-but-not-all/

    Helmut actual Diff
    53.20% 51.10% 2.10%
    46.80% 47.20% -0.40%

    Helmut adjusted Diff
    53.20% 51.98% 1.22%
    46.80% 48.02% -1.22%

    In 2008 he was EVEN MORE off:
    www. sciencedaily. com/releases/2008/10/081016124256.htm
    Norpoth’s forecasted Obama predicting a 50.1% to 49.9% Obama victory
    Actual numbers were Obama 52.9% McCain 45.7%

    Helmut actual Diff
    50.1% 52.9% 2.8%
    49.9% 45.7% -4.2%

    In statistics, these differences are YUGE.

  253. So, I’ve done some digging and the LAST two times HeLLmuth made a prediction he was OFF

    in 2012 he said that Obama will get 53.2 percent of the two-party vote and Romney will get 46.8 percent. ACTUAL numbers were 51.1% and 47.2%, which comes to 51,98% and 48,02%.
    helmut actual Diff adjusted Diff
    53,20% 51,10% 2,10% 51,98% 1,22%
    46,80% 47,20% -0,40% 48,02% -1,22%

  254. That is flawed, because that is like saying: I guessed correct the last 4 times so I have a 100% accuracy.
    My point is that 26 data points is NOT a whole lot to go on.

  255. You should talk you hypocrite.
    Australia’s immigration laws are far far far far stronger than the US ones.
    All those borders mean nothing and every country in the world has immigration laws.
    We arent in favor of eliminating our sovereignty in favor of one world government?
    How horrible

  256. Google “Keeling Curve” Jack, and start reading. I mean that CO2 problem.

  257. I’ve had more Chinese friends than American friends. Being afraid of China is a hangover from people who have war recollections – those tensions won’t be around forever. Young Chinese would rather trade with you, form a business partnership, or be your Facebook buddy. They are incredibly ethical, generous and loyal people and they are doing more towards the clean tech revolution than other advanced nations. China already has half a million electric buses on the road. Australia has one. I hope Tesla make a motza on the Model 3, because you can bet the Chinese will make one 90% as good for half the price – and that’s a global game changer.

    They gain nothing and lose much from invasion – it’s more a process of gradual interdependency. They can’t bomb Sydney without every third victim being one of their own. Each year, Australia gets a little more Asian and China gets a little more western. When I went to the in-laws place on the weekend, I fried noodles on the BBQ. I know it sounds naff, but ‘we are one’.

  258. Yes, all true but irrelevant as it looks like the majority of American voters may no longer care about International “respect.” I’m not saying I like this, I’m just reporting a stark truth. Americans have turned inward, if not isolationist. Many of them don’t like being lectured when the U.S. does something overseas, or when it doesn’t do something. The next election will be about domestic issues. And the day may come much sooner than you think when Oz has to face China alone. And then Canberra can plead with Beijing about the CO2 problem.

  259. Well, I’d pick a better song – one without references to imaginary beings, something with a good beat, but yeah, you’re starting to think now.
    The only thing that makes you American and me Australian is a logo on our passports. One day, with luck, you will wake up and discover that you’re an earthling – made of the same stuff as everybody else.

  260. You need to read before commenting. “Norpoth’s primary model works for every presidential election since 1912, with the notable exception of the 1960 election. These results give the model an accuracy of 96.1 percent.”

  261. “Norpoth’s primary model works for every presidential election since 1912, with the notable exception of the 1960 election. These results give the model an accuracy of 96.1 percent.”

  262. Thanks irwincur – you are the first responder to make a comment which actually supports Trump. Other responses up and down this page suggest that Trump supporters are uncivilised, unscientific rednecks – the sort of mean spirited people you wouldn’t want as neighbours (especially if you didn’t have white skin). They have done nothing to help their preferred candidate.

  263. yup, and bush, and clinton, and retroactively every election back to 1912 except 1960.

  264. I’m a professor, dimwit, a bureaucrat works in a system. Good lord, if you’re going to make pointless ad hominem attacks atleast be accurate. That’s like claiming engineers or factory workers are bureaucrats because they exist in a vague system of corporate structure.

    I’ll be sure to remind myself to necropost this in november just to watch you blabber desperately…seeking an answer as to why Trump lost by nearly 400 electoral votes. But don’t worry hotshot, I’m sure your shriveled heart will make it atleast a while longer.

    Your pathetic strawman is so silly, insisting I hate you then pretending any disagreement automatically makes you a bigot. No, you’re a bigot because you support a bigot who supports white supremacy. It’s a pretty straightforward linear progression.

    Anyways, I love watching you try to equate teaching at the collegiate level with high school. It’s silly and shows how slow witted you really are. Maybe you should go back to remedial classes where you belong, let the big girls talk now since you clearly aren’t smart enough to handle actual discussion and instead want to fling feces.

  265. Wrong plebe. No double comma kid. Born poor and brought up by a single mother, thank you. I earned my money. And one of my Alma Maters likes the checks I give them. As I said. You need me, but you hate me.

    And you really are a dumbass, aren’t you? I am not a cog. I AM THE SYSTEM, you disgusting lowlife. I am a citizen. Without my tax dollars, you are out of work.

    You on the other hand are a bureaucrat. A pawn. A zero. A nothing. You are not a has been. You are a never will be. You teach because you cannot offer anything else. You are a glorified babysitter, using a standardized curriculum – created by others – to occupy the short attention spans of the youth you indoctrinate.

    And you are so blinded by your disgusting gutter ideology, you actually believe anyone that is different than you is a racist, bigot, homophobe, xenophobe, or any other label you are told to use.

    As I said, by November, your world will be changing. You might actually have to contribute to our country, rather than consume. And as the typical liberal leech, I think you will find a more hospitable environment in Canada.

  266. Nixon put wage and price controls across the country. Unconstitutional. And not a Conservative thing to do.

  267. Nice, ad hominems, so desperate to insult me when I chose to educate the world rather than be a crony and milk contracts and resources pretending you’re some Horatio Alger when you’re nothing more than a trust fund baby.

    Sounds like you’re older than dirt (and I loved my 2 foot tall mohawk all through college…my spouse loved it too). But thanks for playing the game, you think society needs you when you’re nothing more than a leeching cog in the system. You thrive off of ignorance and hate, trust me, I don’t despise you, I don’t care about you. You on the other hand hate me because you know I’m right and deep down you get that you’re a sniveling coward with nothing more than fat pockets because of friends and former wealth. Keep hiding behind your gate in your apartheid community.

    Lobbing insults inside your own prison is hilarious to people like me. 😉

  268. The fact that the liberals and the RINOs hate Mr. Trump proves to me that he is the man for the job.

  269. Everyone of my comments was responding to you, you liberal piece of filth, not any statistical prediction. And I live quite comfortably in the large home I designed myself, in a resort community. I earned my money the old fashioned way. I actually worked for it.

    You, on the other had, rely upon the handouts of the rich people you despite so much. You need their money for scholarships, grants, and endowments. I know plenty about your world, you sniveling little punk. And you know nothing about mine. And that is the issue. You are nice and safe in your ivory tower without the need to actually prove your value. Just like all the liberal weasel bureaucrats. You need people like me. You cannot exist without me. Yet you despise me.

    You are living proof why liberalism is a mental disorder. Go “blank” yourself, you extremist academic liberal piece of garbage. And get out of America. You do not deserve to live here.

  270. You’re a pathetic whelp who wrote this screed without a clue of understanding. Like I said, when Trump loses, where are you going to go? 🙂

    Oh that’s right, you’ll still be in your tar paper shack in whatever backwater shit hill of a state you call home being proud of your ignorance and poverty. Norpath’s model has no grasp of context and I will enjoy chatting with him when I run into him at the next conference for blowing such a call. But don’t worry troll-o, I’ll be right here educating the youth of America in facts, something your candidate has yet to do.

  271. The USA has already lost the respect of every other nation – civilized or not. Obama did that all by himself, beginning with his “apology” tour.

    And what “CO2 problem?” You mean the one where people breathe?

  272. Apartheid? Where did that come from. I mentioned nothing other than “goodbye.”

    Oh wait, I get it. You were told Mr. Trump is a racist, therefore anyone who mentions anything positive about him must be one too.

    But you are the typical liberal piece of filth. A hypocrite that is quick to shoot his mouth off if Trump gets elected, but is too chicken stuff to leave their nice cushy permanent job where they can indoctrinate the mush brained youth with your liberal tripe.

    You disgust me. You cannot even live up to your own convictions.

    And funny, I don’t recall any Conservatives mentioning they were moving to Canada in 2008. I did not cause the rise of the candidacy of Donald Trump. You and the rest of the politically correct extremist liberal progressives did.

    The rest of America are tired of your BS. And your world will be changing very soon. Good luck in Canada, you lowlife liberal piece of garbage.

  273. The polls show Hillary ahead of trump in the total pop

    Do you understand that the president isn’t decided by only republican primary voters?

  274. This is he dumbest study I ever heard of. How do you account for all the republicans splitting the establishment vote. He must account for it some say bc Hillary has a much higher share of her parties vote then trump does.

    If he was my professor I wud never go to class again unless it was to mock him

    I have an Mba in statistics if someone had mentioned this in school they would have been laughed off campus

  275. Hillary has a 52% unfavorability, according to some polls they have the same or hillary has more. But ofcourse as a liberal you will believe what you want to believe….

  276. And Hillary is a serious candidate? What is her motivation, other than power? Do you really think she cares about the people. Just read the accounts of ex secret service agents to understand who she really is.

    More to the point. You have two choices:
    1) Donald Trump
    2) Hillary Clinton

    The election is tied, and YOU cast the deciding vote of who will be President. Now choose.

  277. We have different measures of character then. If you are supporting Trump, that is obvious.

  278. PLEASE!! Nominate a serious candidate! Then I can get behind this statement. I’m a swing voter. Swing voters decide elections. Very few independents are siding with Trump.

  279. These people are oblivious to the fact that Obama’s Nobel prize was a resounding statement about world respect following U.S. policies that basically lead the world into an unending war and a global recession. They probably have also never set foot on another continent.

  280. He didn’t rub the win on Rubio’s face last night? He was fair to the small businesses he owed money to when his company filed bankruptcy repeatedly? He was fair to the American people when he hired undocumented immigrants? The most basic fact is that the constitutional checks and balances were created for situations like this. Trump will nut accomplish many of the totalitarian ideas he thinks he will (even IF he is elected). Government is not like business. Most of his ideas will be filibustered and republican senators are not going to side with him to break a filibuster for a wacko liberal plan. I don’t think he would even last a year before resigning if he were elected…BIG IF.

  281. He didn’t win yet. This article is about the presidency, NOT super Tuesday or even the republican nomination.

  282. We can hold hands and sing “Kumbaya”?
    What a freak =in moron

  283. Nah… his approval rating by many sources is around 50%. The country does not have nearly as negative of an opinion of him as you do.

  284. Are you brainwashed or something? Going by political opinion polling in foreign countries, the opinion of the U.S. went up dramatically, normally by double-digits with Barack Obama’s election. And it has only marginally gone down over his two terms.

    Looks like you’ve been watching too much FOX and letting it give your brain a good, deep scrubbing.

  285. Uh, for someone who’s main “pro” being their ability to negotiate with foreign partners, Trump and his supporters should care deeply about what we are thought of, and their candidate (whom everyone else except the man this article is about agrees will lose in a landslide in the general).

  286. It’s a given. He’s a joke domestically, not just abroad. He would get zero respect from world leaders.

    He’s such a niche candidate it’s hard to believe he’s winning the nomination. Trump, A Republican candidate who favors big government more than Hillary Clinton!

  287. Trump has 60% unfavorability in polling aggregates. Everybody knows this is false.

  288. I can guarantee that Democrat turn out in general is going to be down at least 10%. The black vote probably down 30%. This is the hill that the Democrats are very aware of. Add in some Bernie migration to Trump that already looks to be materializing and the Dems do have problems. The RNC turn out has been smashing records.

  289. Because he is a pushover. The world always likes weak American presidents, it represents an advantage for them. Frankly, the US should be negotiating from a place of power, it has earned that right and to do anything but is not properly representing the people.

  290. Perhaps you should read a little into Trump’s history and why he is so highly regarded in business circles. It is that he is known as a strong but fair negotiator and listens to all sides while deal making. Sure he is bombastic, but in NYC you kind of have to be to stick out. He is well known to get input from the lowest of his employees when making decisions, like the grounds crew at a golf course he was building or a janitor in Trump Towers. How many global CEO’s do you know that even talk to the kitchen staff let alone ask for their advice?

  291. lol @ Rubio and Bush are men of characters. You must not be too good of a judge of characters then.

  292. Not sure how you can say this with certainty. While the media portrayal of Trump is that of an idiot, he is a well know and well versed negotiator. He is very liked by those he goes toe to toe against in business negotiations, because while he is a Pit Bull, he is regarded as fair, willing to bargain, and never, ever rubs a win in anyone’s face. It has been said by some of his adversaries that after taking him on, they cannot help but like him and become friends and allies.

    Don’t buy into the media BS about Trump, look at his business accomplishments. You do not get to where he is by making equally powerful people your enemies.

  293. what planet do you live on? Obama is well respected around the world? and brilliant? oh my-thanks for the giggles… guess your head has been buried up your arse for way too long, and you just decided to come up for some fresh air for a moment?

  294. Surprise, women cared what others thought while in their company. That’s almost every woman in the world.They could not care less after that vacation. America should not have to give a care about other nations.

  295. So, how exactly does one measure the candidates’ performance during the primary when most of the states have yet to even vote?

    Professor Norpoth’s methods should be reviewed before they are given any weight. A lot of claims have been made, but basic facts aren’t adding up.

  296. You say you dont know squat about world piracy, especially historically?
    You work for somali pirates or something?
    I was raised by idealistic communists, dude.
    I get your unicorn world.
    You wanna power all of sydney’s infrasructure with unicorn farts after you get rid of internal combustion?
    By the way, we are CARBON based life forms.
    CO2 is plant food, duh.
    In Star Trek they all live in peace and harmony.
    I live in the real world.
    My communist mother loves loves loves Obambi and so do Chinese dictators.
    My ma hates Trump.
    And communist dictators hate Trump, too.
    The FACT that you DONT like Trump is a big reason to LOVE him

  297. Translation: he loses the respect of an elite cadre of leftie cultural marxist types. I’m a kiwi and I love Trump. Wish there was one a few years ago here who would have kept Auckland from turning into an Asian supercity.

  298. CO2 problem?
    Without the USA you would live in a hut without running water without electricity without internet without satelite tv without cars, trains, planes etc.

  299. OR, we can all decide to be kind to one another – dismantle all those wasted armed forces, divert the resources to productive endeavours and live in harmony.
    I mean – who is going to bomb their kids Facebook friends?

  300. If we dont like the leader of your nation can we tell you who your leaders should be?
    FWIW, Trump is where he is in large measure because Americans are tired and sick of being told “be nice” as the world pisses on us and even more sick and tired of being told who we should vote for.
    You sound like the GOPe scum we reject.
    Trump already got negative endorsements from the dopey pope and that HELPED

  301. Yup.
    Toys are made in Asia, but are expensive there.
    Why?
    Because they do NOT design them.
    If you lived in the country that INVENTED the internet I should be thanking you.

  302. We dont want to piss off the world that counts on us for their safety?
    I get it.
    There a lot of beggar nations that want to tell us what to do.

  303. Couldnt possibly be because only six people read those journals and the president affects a lot of people

  304. I met a couple of lovely American ladies when we recently travelled to Ireland. They seemed to care what people thought.

    I mean, contempt can easily work both ways – the world’s cafes could adopt a ‘serve Americans last’ policy. They could make Thursday ‘spit on Americans’ day.

    All rather silly and horrible, don’t you think? So much easier and more pleasant if we all just treat each other with respect – and that does require giving a damn what the other thinks.

  305. Wait a second, wait a second…

    You mean he predicted the reelection of an encumbant who polled comparably well amongst his contemporaries at the same time in their first terms?!

    Why didn’t someone say so?!!

    Ohhhhhh Magic witch doctor!!! Grant us your powers!!!!

  306. The same guy and model predicted a razor thin Obama win in 2008 but Obama won comfortably.

  307. The problem is that Trump is a wildcard that can and will finance his own general election run should the republicans screw him with a brokered convention…which means the Republicans lose regardless of who they choose.
    They have to know this.

  308. My personal opinion is that a Trump-Sanders ticket would be a much closer race than a Trump-Clinton due to 20% of Sanders supporters having Trump as their secondary choice.
    Trump inspires voters, much like a 2008 Obama had. Clinton is little more than a wet rag. Besides the anti-Clinton/dem hate vote is much stronger among conservatives than the anti-Trump vote this time around.

    In a brokered convention where Trump gets shafted, the republicans will lose the election and support for years to come. They already lose a good chunk to libertarians.

  309. That is the big difference between the US and Europe/Commonwealth: US doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks of them.
    Besides, the american people don’t want a Angela Merkel. Somebody who shows absolute contempt for the German and European peoples and their culture. Obama has been bad enough in that regard.

  310. Its interesting, half the country would like nothing more than to hang him, a good portion are outright disillusioned with him, with a small minority that think he actually did a good job.

  311. Trump will win. Everybody knows it. You guys need to understand that the USA is not just San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, and NYC.

  312. Not at all – Barack Hussain Obama is well respected and loved around the world. He’s the reason we are gobsmacked you could even consider going from brilliant (Obama), to borderline crazy (Trump).

  313. The US lost any and all credibility when it elected Hussain Obama as President.

  314. Wonder why he presented his model before an audience of civilians rather than publish a paper and submit it for peer review…

  315. Take the money? Can you explain that please David. Have you any idea how little in taxes Google and Apple pay to the nations where they make half their profit?

  316. Honestly you cannot even begin to grasp how little I care what you or anyone else who is not a citizen of this country thinks. Bugger off? We have a far better word for it.

    Most of the world can remain as perplexed as they want, they still take the money. So how about you sitting quietly down there and let the big boy table take care of itself.

  317. I agree. It is a shame that this election cycle included some of the best republican candidates we’ve seen in a long time as well. Kasich, Bush and Rubio are men of character and I would have loved to see a debate with just the three of them. That primary would have brought stone great positive attention to the republican party and possibly grown the party to a point of strength not seen since Reagan.

  318. In 2008 the nation was frustrated by an endless war, started under Bush and a collapsing economy. It was clear which direction the presidency was headed. The real election was the democratic primary. In 2012, despite the Fox News polls repeatedly indicating it was not the case, again, it was clear Obama was going to win. I think that the historical pattern might well indicate a republican leaning; however, the republican party does not seem to have received the message of the 2008 and 2012 elections. Patterns are good whet patterns fit, but this is not an issue of patterns. When progress is important (civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights) the nation well lean towards a progressive president. Currently, that would be the democrat. In all honesty, I think the republicans were going to have a challenge this time no matter what. A moderate like Kasich had a chance. Rubio may have had a chance. Bush was going to struggle against his name. When Trump, Cruz and Carson rose to the top it became very clear how this was going to turn out.

  319. What people seem to be missing is that we’re not merely modelling some deterministic behavior here, we’re modelling something quite confounded in its nature.

  320. As a doctoral graduate of the electoral behavior/ political psychology program at Stony Brook decades ago, I agree with Professor Tugwell.

  321. avocat27
    I don’t see a problem with his shift key or the using or not using of it! What is your problem??? And what does ‘his model mean in your comment??? Explain please!!!

  322. First, if he misheard it, he should have complained. Any politician more intelligent than an idiot would complain about the bad audio on air, if for no other reason than to avoid misunderstandings. Second, if he didnt, then what’s the reasonable interpretation? I have to get back to you on David Duke, the KKK ?

    How freaking paranoid or stupid do you have to get that you think that was a gotcha question? The easy answer is to repudiate them. Failing to do so is not the liberal media screwing him over, that’s him screwing himself.

    You’re so obsessed with bias, and fighting back against it that you’ve abandoned common sense, and become extremely biased in your support of Trump.

    Oh, and by the way: it’s not liberals who are powerless to stop Trump, its conservatives. You’re citing a primary poll, not a general election poll. He will continue finding ways to alienate and discourage people.

  323. Gord, please enlighten us on why you think the professors model does not work for the 1960 presidential election. What do you think accounts for its miss in 1960? What didn’t all the reports and news of that time not get quite right? Don’t leave us hanging!

  324. This outsider comment is from a resident of Sydney, citizen of Australia…feel free to tell me to bugger off, but it’s something US folks ought to factor on voting day…

    If Trump is elected, the USA loses the respect of every other civilised nation. The person you elect represents your nation when he/she travels, and I promise you that Trump will garner zero respect – like an inverse Angela Merkel. If you prefer not being looked down upon from abroad, you need to elect a non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobe who is prepared to tackle the CO2 problem. People will still be perplexed by the American gun culture (a nation that rails agains abortion, but allows Sandy Hook – WTF?), but there we’ve come to accept that it’s something beyond the means of the president to cure.

  325. Based on this morning’s bit of news, I’m beginning to think you’re right, even if for the wrong reasons. Mitch McConnell made it clear that the Republican Party will not support Donald Trump in the general election, and Republicans running for office or reelection have his blessing (and presumably the party’s) to take an anti-Trump stance in their advertising, campaign speeches, etc. it’s pretty clear that the party leadership would rather see Hillary become president than Trump, and it’s hard to fight the power, money, and influence *both* parties can bring to bear, as Sanders is also discovering.

  326. Trust me, I’m pretty sure I’ll be keeping my tenure track position. But hey, when he loses, will you be moving to more receptive apartheid? 🙂

  327. Say hello to President Trump and goodbye to Bogira. I hear Germany is open to all comers. Don’t bother to write.

  328. Do you really think that true Conservatives will sit this one out if Mr. Trump is the nominee? I believe they will line up in droves to keep Clinton from getting anywhere near Pennsylvania Avenue. You don’t need a predictive model for that one. It is common sense.

  329. I’ll admit I’m a liberal but I’m also a political scientist and his modeling is using ‘traditional understandings of cycles’ mixed with a hefty dose of self-supporting R correlation to justify it.

    If Trump wins though, I’ll probably be looking for a new country because I don’t think I want to support living in a racist republic…

  330. If anything he’s relying on popularity within primaries to justify his high-R. It’s a mess of a model in that it’s almost verging on truisms to be meaningful.

  331. Some models work better than others, This one has withstood the test of time but again you never know, Dewey and Truman proved that with no statistics. Post hoc analyses of 2012 raise questions

  332. Predicting the unpredictable or the mathematic of uncertainty IS statistics. I’ve never thought of myself as immortal since receiving my Ph.D but do like the idea 🙂

  333. It seems we will find out shortly but the assumption that combining votes in this way is valid is premature

  334. As a statistician and survey researcher, I understand the impact of missing variables and your assumption that a model is invalid because you have found one, is not valid, although many of my students have tried to use it, No model 8s perfect and Statistical models never include all variables and nevertheless are routinely assumed to be the best predictive models – especially a model that has successfully predicted elections which no doug had unprecedented factors as well. Multiple candidates may work again Trump but other factors ay work for him [including strong populist anti-establishment sentiments, especially if Sanders does ot run, cascade effects, unprecedented dissatisfaction with both parties and the state of the country by members of both parties, unprecedented number of independents. Of course, we won’t know until November and many things can happen between now and then but disregarding this prediction completely may be comfortable to many but nevertheless inappropriate

  335. Disagree. The passion against Trump is much stronger than the anger against HIllary. While many may not like Hillary, people still know that she is a career politician that will not attempt to make Mexico build a wall and calls Mexicans rapists.

    At the end of the day, Trump is a complete wild card and cannot win the general election. We’ll find out.

  336. shot himself in the foot? lol the media have been trying the same attack – “trump is a racist!” – for eight months now, and you think it’s going to work this time? i’m starting to wonder if liberals have some sort of collective learning disability.

  337. Trump will turn them out. Obama will throw his weight behind the winner, I guarantee, and he’ll campaign for them. As for high Republican Turnout? Trump has plenty of time to **** the bed between now and November, and I don’t think he’s going to pass up any opportunities to do so.

  338. Let me count the ways in which that argument is problematic:
    1) 1996
    2) 2000
    3) 2004
    4) 2008
    5) 2012

    Notice how many data points we have here? Just five. Of these, three of them were pretty easy to predict, just based on the political environment, with Clinton Clobbering Dole, and Obama clobbering the GOP in both contests.

    This model assumes that people want to switch to more conservative leaders, but with Trump doing what he’s doing, that might not work. He’s got more enthusiasm on his side than actual operational experience, and he’s just recently shot himself in the foot with the KKK comment.

  339. So, you take a prediction model as credible over empirical results. Right. And while you’re at it, point to the massive operations that would be necessary to rig such an election, especially if they use the in-person voter fraud you folks obsess about.

  340. How do you figure that Cheryl? Cruz and Rubio are very similar candidates and it is a very reasonable question to ask, what would happen if you narrowed it down to Trump and Cruz or Rubio?

    That is what David is saying, that since we are seeing a multi-candidate result, we actually have 67% of republicans voting against Trump. What happens when it is Trump vs Cruz or Trump vs Rubio and arguably they might have joined forces.

    THAT is the point… and a very good question. Unfortunately, the Republican primary system (arguably better than the Democrats with their Super Delegates and caucuses) does not allow for run-offs, so until Rubio or Cruz drops out, we don’t find out the answer to this – maybe not until it is Trump vs Hillary.

  341. This is what worries me too. The truth is that Trump has 60%+ of the republicans voting against him. Without a runoff, we have no idea how he would fare. In SC, it would have been very interesting to see if Cruz and Rubio (who are awfully similar) would have combined their supporters in a runoff and would Trump have fallen to second with a 40%-33% result?

  342. Bernie’s a great choice. But, um, Cruz is a Seven Mountains Dominionist whose father told him that God prophesied that he would rule the “political realm”, and he’s a massive jerk to everyone he’s ever met. Cruz is a nightmare.

  343. The 1960 election was really, really, really unusual. The most important feature is that Kennedy used TV effectively and Nixon did not.

  344. Bingo. Sanders v. Trump gives Sanders a chance precisely because Trump is handicapped by this and Sanders isn’t.

    Clinton v. Trump, she suffers most of the same damage as Trump from this… and she’s a bad campaigner.

  345. Trump’s negatives actually are likely to increase as he is put under pressure to actually say how he going to carry out all his broad sweeping statements.

  346. You can easily match a model to past events, but that doesn’t mean that your model will work with future events especially as this election is so radically different than previous ones.

  347. No the polls show that Trump is the only candidate who has a majority of negative sentiment from the general voting public. The percentage of voters who have a negative view of two of the leading rival candidates Trump 58% Cruz 31%

  348. That third group may be a “phenomenon unseen in any American election in history”, at least in significant numbers, but it is no longer unique. Because there’s a similarly large and dedicated group on the other side who, despite being Democrats or liberal-leaning independents, claim they will refuse to vote for Hillary under any circumstances. So that particular roadblock to Trump’s success is balanced out by a comparable roadblock to Hillary’s.

  349. I believe I’ve read about models that successfully “predict” (actually retrodict) past stock market averages, yet get nowhere with new data. In the case of the stock market there is much more data available than there is for primary elections, but the data probably means less.

  350. and in October NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will indict Trump for fraud, and where will that leave YOU?

  351. Chasing his political enemies is the least of it. Saving civilization is more to the point.

  352. Not wanting martial law imposed simply so someone can chase his political enemies is brainwashing?

  353. Again, I think my prediction is correct. We will know about the nomination by the end of March. If Trump wins then we will see what happens in November. My preference is Kasich, but I do not think the pay as a whole has enough sense to nominate him right now.

  354. Michael Barnathan — Thank you for your observation.

    I was going to say that when training neural networks, it’s a common practice to reserve about 20% of your observations and not train the neural network on them. So you take 80% of your cases and train the neural network to classify those known outcomes correctly, and then use the remaining 20% not to train the network but to gauge how well it will predict unknown cases. That is typically done with several thousand curated cases.

    To say that you have a 96% success rate in matching election results going back to 1912 isn’t that hard to achieve when your relying to heavily on historical outcomes; and certainly the public isn’t mathematically literate enough to spot how that statistic might actually not necessarily be a good thing.

  355. Trump defeats Rubio and Cruz in a two person matchup, and is currently ahead of all by double digits in all but 4 states in the union. He has more votes in most than Rubio and Cruz put together. So, the number of candidates do not matter. Moreover, this has been the case for the better part of nine months, particularly at the state levels (and this is a state by state contest). Moreover, in the NH primary Trump received more votes in a then 9 person race than Clinton did in a two person race. He will be the nominee in spite of the hundred million smear ad campaign being ran against him by the establishment right now. Dems have known this would be the case since August, and that is why they have smeared him so badly as well.

  356. “The Stonybrook University professor says his model has been only wrong once, since 1912.”
    — Fortune

    the election the model got wrong was 1960. so i guess the professor is lying since you obviously know better than him.

  357. The problem with this prediction is that he is using methods that worked in previous primaries that did not involve so many primary candidates. This year is unprecedented. He also assumes Trump is having success in the primary because he is coming out on top; however, he is not winning a majority in any state. He has about 1/3 of the primary popular vote. Also, unlike previous years, Trump has inspired a triple division of sentiment amongst his party. There is the third that supports him, but the other two thirds are divided between those who want “anything but Clinton/Sanders” and those who are saying they will not vote for Trump, no matter what. That third group is a phenomenon unseen in any American election in history as far as I know.

    Trump is unelectable in the general election. He will ignite too much passion on the left and discourage too many moderates AND true conservatives on the right. Norpoth is using political trends to make this prediction. Trump is setting new trends. My name is David Berkley. Mark my prediction. Clinton beats Trump/Cruz. Rubio beats Sanders. Rubio/Clinton is too difficult to call at this point. Trump could potentially beat Sanders, especially if Bloomberg runs, but that also could result in the first independent president.

  358. well, at least Professor Norpoth didn’t use a ground hog for his statistical prediction for the next President of these United States of America. Trump is a good thing.

  359. The ACA has raised my working class’s family’s insurance rates by hundreds of dollars without providing them any reasonable coverage. Insane deductibles for any kind of treatment. Anyone that defends it either shills for the Democrats or is an insurance company investor.

  360. No, banning all Muslims, boasting about putting up a wall on the Mexican border but not the Canadian border, wishing his supporters could beat up protesters, and praising a fake story about Gen. Pershing using a dead pig’s body to intimidate Muslim fighters is bigotry and thuggery.

    And people are calling the repeal of the Affordable Care Act as thuggery because that would explicitly disfavor lower class White Americans, among many others.

  361. Time for a trip back to August 2012, when a pair of Colorado University political scientists unveiled a model that had Romney beating Obama in the electoral college 325-213. A month before the election their updated prediction was Romney winning 330-208.

    And remember, that model had correctly predicted every election since 1980. Now except for one, I guess.

  362. The professor claims to have called the 2000 election, in the sense that he correctly predicted that Al Gore would win the popular vote. (from an interview with Fox and Friends)

    That’s actually a bit of a problem for him. Had the model been dead bang on, it would have seen a 0.5% difference between the two vote shares. That’s not a prediction of victory for Gore. That’s a statistical tie.

    But I can’t find where he says what numbers his model actually put out for the 2000 election. If he predicted a Gore blowout, then that’s not a win for the model. If he predicted a statistical tie, then the way he’s talking about the model makes him sound clueless or shyster-ish.

  363. So am I, having taught Statistical Machine Learning at graduate level for several years . (We used the Hastie text book in one of the courses.) We use Python as the platform for vision work algos development and then move the algo into C++ for real time production work.

    Much of this current excitement and ‘fear’ is overblown. These things come around every few years. Same excitement occurred in the late 80s when Expert Systems were all the rage. (And I thought like you then.) The fear of machines taking jobs was everywhere.

    Makes good copy. Don’t worry about machines taking jobs just yet despite the hype. Proportionately far more jobs have been taken by illegal invaders than machines.

  364. Amen Nicholas! We are more voting against the Establishment than voting for Trump. That he promises to evict the immivaders and reverse the criminal trade deficits with China and Mexico is a dream come true. He *may* let us down, but we *KNOW* the Establishment will only continue selling out our present and our children’s future.

  365. Apparently you’re the one who doesn’t understand. You stated earlier that Northop’s model has correctly predicted every PRESIDENT since Bill Clinton’s 1996 victory . That simply was not true in 2000, and Northop himself doesn’t claim that he did. You can draw all the pictures you want, but your earlier claim was still false.

  366. I’ve never been to Dearborn, so I don’t have the experience to make an informed comment on that. I’ll let people who have actually been there take that up.

    On the other hand, my prior comment about automation is something I’m extremely familiar with.

  367. I think your analogy is missing something here. If your model is predicting that Candidate X gets 55% of the vote and Candidate Y gets 45% of the vote, and the model is claiming a relatively slim margin of error, then it does make sense to say the model predicts “with 99% certainty” that Candidate X will win. If the vote share and the margin of error are accurate, then if you ran the election a million times, only ten thousand of them might yield results where Y received more votes.

    The question of whether the model’s claims are accurate is a separate one.

  368. It can be if you’re doing your statistics right. For example, you might train the model on 1980, 1984, 1988, and then see if the trained model predicts the (already known) outcome of the 1992 election.

    But from everything I’ve been reading, this particular model isn’t one that we should put a lot of stock in.

  369. He claims in an interview with Fox and Friends that he correctly predicted that Al Gore would win the popular vote. But remember, Gore only won the popular vote by 0.5%. I don’t know what percentage Norpoth predicted, but the actual result was “statistically too close to call,” so I’d be far more impressed if that was the result the model gave.

  370. i lost my shift key in a poker game.

    actually norpoth did correctly predict the 2000 election results, which were then overturned by the supreme court.

    still struggling to wrap your head round the margin of error thing, eh? the model doesn’t predict trump has a 97% chance of victory, it predicts trump would beat clinton in a hypothetical match up with 97% accuracy, according to the professor’s numbers. the professor’s model gives whomever the republican nominee is a 61% chance of victory.

    “As the presentation continued, laughter turned to silence as Norpoth forecasted a 61 percent chance of a Republican win in the general election.”

    understand now, or do you need me to draw a picture?

  371. “His model has correctly predicted every President since Bill Clinton’s 1996 victory.” That’s not correct, and if you read the article, Norpoth himself doesn’t say so. In fact, he didn’t get 2000 right. The point I was making is that if you use a back-tested model, you can manipulate it to come up with any results you want. Just curious- but do you want to pick a candidate- any candidate- who at this point has a 97% chance of victory? BTW, is the shift key on your keyboard not working?
    ‘his model

  372. Your speed reading missed the part about Muslims didn’t you? Or are you perhaps suggesting a machine auto prayer?

  373. i guess the intellectual disintegration of the republican party is maybe less relevant than than the high republican turnout and low democratic turnout?

  374. “Mar 13, 2012
    Helmut Norpoth
    Professor of political science, Stony Brook University
    The outcome of the New Hampshire Primary predicts that President Barack Obama will win a second term in the November election…”
    — Huffington Post

    wow, that was a difficult five second google search.

  375. very astute observation, norpoth isn’t 104+ years old.

    his model has correctly predicted every president since billl clinton’s 1996 victory. liberals were rather more enthusiastic about his prognostications when he was forecasting an obama victory.

  376. You’re a professor. I’m just an ordinary schmuck. No university degree. I have to rely on 6 decades of observation. But I have visited enough farms to know what horseshit smells like.
    … And in Norpoth’s case he’s using the old predicting tactics that Roma fortunetellers have used for centuries. He’s trying to sell a paper. If he says that its accurate from the outset the majority of humans will believe it.
    … Basic public school level logic points to the salient fact that predicting a winner after the fact is rather easy. You have all the data on hand. Call it hindsight.
    … I don’t know if you’d agree or not but I noticed the journalist/author either didn’t ask important questions of Norpoth’s boast. First would be how many times did you run the model. Even I know this, my dad was a civil engineer, (he thought I didn’t listen.) this type of model must be run numerous times. And there must be a variable result. If the outcome was always the same then the model is bogus.
    … Do us all a favor, you can email him because he’d consider you a colleague, me or anyone else wouldn’t get a response. Ask how many times he ran that model. If the results were the same every time, then his model is contrived.
    … Models also shouldn’t have the same result for every election. That’s where I think he got tripped up which twigged my antennae. He said he kept getting tripped up when he said he mentioned 1960. I think he ran the program dozens of times. 1960 was the accurate one because the result was consistent. I have a hunch that he published the best run of the model. You might ask him to send you the file of the model or the program copy so you can run it independently.
    … Every academic paper or result needs peer review. If he doesn’t send it to you. And you run it. You know and I know that if it is a valid model there should be variable results. If not. The model is bogus.

  377. I was alive and a witness to that election. I know why the professors model wouldn’t fit. And it had nothing to do with voter fraud. I’ve read all the reports and the news of that time. None have ever quite got it right. Need a good laugh.

  378. Why this professor never revealed his “Fortune Telling” skill during prior Presidential elections, Oh, That is right, he comes out from the closet.

  379. Why would they bring a third string, third rate school, unheard of professor of useless study that uses data based primarily on the the fact party change happens after a two term party cycle. News and the media, not science. The only thing more pathetic than his “science” is the media pandering. It is possible for a Trump presidency, 97%, I would like to see this jerk put his life savings and house on a bet, if he believes in his work, it is a no brainer, like him.

  380. With Trump’s negative ratings being in the upper 50s/low 60s, Hillary’s unfavorability gets blunted.

    I suspect an October Surprise will happen this year-NY AG Eric Schneiderman indicts Trump for fraud, and THAT will be ballgame

  381. Ah yes, the ever-popular back-tested model. Judging from Norpoth’s picture, I doubt he personally has been predicting election outcomes since 1912. As one other poster has noted, I can come up with a back-tested model that confidently predicts the Broncos will win the 2016 Super Bowl. Or, to give another example: the sun rose on November 4, 1980, and the Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, was elected President that day. I predict that the sun will also rise on November 8, 2016, so it’s a virtual certainty that the Republican candidate will win this year too. Norpoth states that his credentials include that he correctly predicted Clinton’s re-election in 1996. Good grief! Any 10-year-old with a passing interest in politics could have done that. This reminds me of the University of Colorado professors who confidently predicted a landslide Romney victory in 2012, based on a (what else?) back-tested model, supposedly dating back to 1980, that in fact had only been developed just before the 2012 election. Color me sceptical on this one. Norpoth has obviously succeeded in drawing attention to himself with his 97% prediction, but I don’t think any serious observer would say that ANY candidate, Democrat or Republican, has a 97% chance of victory at this point.

  382. Trump got less than half of the Republican Latino vote in Nevada and that number is based on polling 100 Latinos that voted so it’s got a big margin of error. Most Latinos in Nevada have voted Democrat by a huge margin in the past.

  383. The “model” is not adequately revealed here nor elsewhere, and fails to take into consideration the intellectual disintegration of the Republican Party and its members. The Party has developed a powerful voter base contingent upon personality type, non-reality-based learned behavior and membership, and repulsion motivation. This base is continually stirred from the top by isolation propaganda. If the Republican base were your teenage child, you would have it committed for cult deprogramming.

  384. Everyone else’s model says anyone who wins the general election will need the Hispanic vote. How is the Hispanic vote all of the sudden not necessary with this model? Because you know Mexicans are not going to vote for Trump after he called them rapists and no Hispanics but the Cubans are going to vote for Trump because of his immigration policies.

  385. Get on the Trump Train!!!!

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  386. In this model Sanders looses no matter who he is up against (Trump, Cruz or Rubio) and Clinton losses only to Trump but beats both Rubio and Cruz. That’s what’s written, I don’t buy it though. Time will tell.

    I’ve seen another (Nate Silver) that has a even better track record than the above mentioned. His model doesn’t share the same result’s though. He still has Clinton beating Trump, Cruz and Rubio. I have ‘yet’ to see his model proven wrong, maybe this is the time BUT maybe is is not.

  387. No chance of beating Bernie?
    He has spent nearly $100 million of other people’s money and he still can’t seem to get ahead of Hilary, while Trump has spent 1/4 of what Bernie has spent. That should tell you that Bernie would have to out spend Trump in a general election.

    Not to mention that Bernie sucks. he doesn’t seem to understand that those “free” things that Sweden, Norway, and Finland get come with compensatory Military service for all able men ages 17-19. But, hey, you can feel the bern all you want…in basic training.

  388. WTF, you’re literally wishing for the collapse of civilization. Stop and listen to yourself for a second.

  389. You’re worried about other humans taking your jobs when you should actually be worried about machines taking your jobs.

  390. The Democrats have an uphill climb to win the White House in 2016:

    1) Hillary Clinton has extremely high unfavorability ratings (but so does Trump)
    2) The last time Democrats held the White House for 3 consecutive terms was over 60 years ago.

    And most important:

    3) Republican turnout has been very high in the primaries and caucuses, for example Nevada almost tripled compared to

    4) Democratic turnout has been LOWER than in 2008 when everyone was pumped up about getting rid of Bush. Now Republicans are pumped up about getting rid of Obama.

  391. But does the model account for such a huge field of primary candidates splitting the total vote early on… or is that discounted by the unpredicted shifts that began in South Carolina?

  392. And the GOP would have been right in criticizing the methods behind this model. There are FAR, FAR more sophisticated models out there. Read up on the kind of detailed precinct level modeling the Obama campaign used in 2012! This guy’s model performed poorly in 2008, predicting an Obama-McCain tie and got it right for the most part in 2012. Those are the only two truly independent validation points to date.

    This model will be right until it is horrible wrong. Then he’ll probably add another parameter to back fit and give it another whirl.

  393. He doesn’t need to be old, he just needs the data set. But apparently you are too old to have live brain cells.

  394. As a professor who teaches grad level applied stats, I have to agree with Michael. Let me expand, and point out that with elections only every 4 years and primaries a relatively recent phenomenon, there are too few data points in this model. Probably because of such a limited dataset, the professor only cross-validated his model (holding out one election at a time for validation and error estimation). The problem with this is that he used ALL of the data to decide which predictors to include.

    Finally it is worth noting that most of the presidential elections in the calibration dataset haven’t been close. So yes, when an incumbent does very poorly in an early primary that is usually a bad sign for the incumbent party, but that simplistic relationship isn’t going to work in all cases. And yes, when a challenger dominates their primary that is usually the sign of a strong challenging candidate but this year by any objective measure the GOP field is incredibly weak and fractured.

    It might also be worth noting that he has only used the model in predictive mode twice, and predicted Obama to beat McCain by 0.2% in 2008 whereas he actually beat McCain quite soundly. Counting only wins and losses without looking at the size of the error relative to the closeness of the election is misleading.

    So the professor’s model has some fundamentally sound reasoning, but at this point he has only 2 true validation points. And for one of those data points his model was actually quite far off!

  395. Perhaps. But it’s extremely difficult to find the details of his prior predictions and timing thereof, unfortunately. What I have found doesn’t suggest the model is particularly good at the percentage vote predictions, and in 2000 in particular he predicted early on Gore winning 55-45.

  396. And Virginia polls have Clinton ahead of Trump on average by 14 points. The best poll Trump could manage in Virginia is Clinton ahead by 7. All Clinton needs to do is get 270 electoral votes. She basically is starting out with 230 in reliable blue states. And that’s discounting places like New Hampshire which has that rebel streak in it. Let’s say Trump wins the states Romney won plus New Hampshire, Colorado, Florida & Ohio. It still won’t be enough. All Hillary Clinton needs to do is get Nevada, Iowa & Virgnina and she wins the election.

  397. I commend you for at least attempting to judge the merits of the model based on the methodology, rather than feelings.

  398. No statistician would give any candidate a 99% chance of winning. What is more telling is that this article does not provide the model so it can be independently tested.

  399. You are using data from 3 primaries that total 16 Electoral Votes in value. Clinton is dominating in South Carolina, worth 9 Electoral Votes, and has overwhelming leads in 12 Super Tuesday states, including Texas and Georgia. Sanders only leads in his home state of Vermont. Further on, she is dominating in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Florida. Your numbers will look much different in 2 weeks when Sanders is buried by Clinton’s delegate pile.

  400. The general rebellion against politics as usual clearly obviates any attempt to predict it from the usual thing that happened in the past. I guess the Prof is better at math than common sense.

  401. Exactly what I have been debating with a friend of mine. I too could be very successful at predicting the outcome of elections that have already taken place. I predict: The Denver Broncos will win the 2016 Super Bowl.

  402. Biased or unbiased standard deviation? 🙂

    Aside from the question of whether he’s backtesting properly and avoiding overfitting his model, there’s also the matter of data bias. The model was trained on candidates that were very unlike Trump. It may very well be very accurate for “more of the same”, but Trump is an outlier and was not drawn from the same “distribution” as the rest of the politicians.

    To be clear, I think he’s probably capable, but I also know that there are many pitfalls in this type of analysis, and he is not specifically trained in statistical inference. It would be interesting to see the original paper.

  403. I’ll reserve my judgment on that until I read the actual research and see whether he knows how to properly construct and test a statistical model. It’s really easy to fool yourself in this field regardless of what you’re trying to model.

  404. Did you compute a confidence interval on your predictions? Most statisticians wouldn’t even make one without giving a p-value, since this is the primary safeguard in place against reporting predictions which were due to luck.

  405. Not extremely poor, only poor to the extent that someone outside of statistics who isn’t particularly practiced at creating these models tends to be. It’s very hard not to fool yourself in this subject – pitfalls all over the place when you try to create a predictive model, and even generally statistically literate people can fall prey to one.

    That being said, he isn’t an expert at this but has enough general knowledge to pass for one – of course, the journals who are covering him know even less about modeling, so they rely on his credentials.

  406. I have a PhD in Machine Learning, a subject dedicated almost exclusively to training these types of classification models. Jerry is actually correct (and one of the few to correctly point this issue out). The technical term for this issue is overfitting, in which a model is tweaked for accuracy on past data and the results are incorrectly assumed to hold for future data as well. In reality, the model has been tuned so finely that it essentially “memorizes” the past data. When confronted with future data, the accuracy of an overfit model ends up being significantly lower than what would be predicted based on the past.

  407. You can, but you need to take special precautions when doing this type of backtesting or you’ll end up fooling yourself into thinking it’s more accurate than it is. Most of the people commenting on this thread, particularly the rude anons, appear not to have an idea that it’s possible to do a backtest wrong, and that *correct* statistical modeling is actually a fairly difficult art to master.

  408. It’s the sort of mistake people make when they assume it’s simple. When you train on past data, you need to retain a validation set that you don’t optimize your model for, and use that to monitor when your model’s accuracy on optimized and unoptimized data starts to diverge (at that point, stop optimizing! Your accuracy on the backtested data is no longer accurate if you keep going). Otherwise your model is likely memorizing the past pattern, not abstracting away the underlying pattern that could be used to predict what will happen in the future.

  409. Predictive modeling is usually a graduate level topic in specific fields that require it. Most of the population doesn’t know how to create one, and your comment suggests that you don’t realize the potential issues you can encounter while creating one either, such as overfitting, which I strongly suspect is the one involved in this backtested model with suspiciously high accuracy on data that almost entirely predates the model’s creation. Stop being condescending and start pointing out the actual merits and flaws in the model. See my reply to Solution1776 for more detail on why I believe this model may be flawed.

  410. True. But he must think it’s worth the risk to make the prediction at this early stage. It’s his model, and maybe results for a lopsided result (as he’s predicting here – not a close race) can be predicted earlier in the process.

    Perhaps this is similar to the way elections are called as the voting results come in. I always see people saying, “How can they be calling this race for Candidate X when it says that only 2% of the results are in?” Well, there’s a science to it. Analysts don’t have to wait until 50% of the results are reported, unless it’s a very close election. Usually the trend is clear much earlier in the evening, when a representative sample has come in.

  411. (I have a doctorate in machine learning)

    This disregards overfitting, of either the automatic or the manual type. If your model doesn’t fit the prior data, you tweak your model’s parameters and get a better fit. And a better fit. And a better fit.

    But if you don’t simultaneously test it on *unknown* data that you’re *not* optimizing for, you’re overfitting your model and essentially memorizing the prior data, not creating something that’s truly predictive. In that case, your accuracy on future data will be really lousy compared to what you got on past data, but you won’t know it until you try.

    It’s really easy to make a model that gets good accuracy on almost any dataset you’ve already observed, if you’re willing to add enough parameters to it. But it usually doesn’t end up being a useful model.

    So in short, I think the author means well but is probably fooling himself. And of course most journalists and the public just hear “97%” and think that’s the whole story.

  412. Do you also argue with your doctor when he asks you about family history of cancer or heart disease?

    “Well, Mr. Tracey, your 2 brothers died of heart attacks when they reached age 58, as did your father, his 3 brothers, your grandfather and your great-grandfather. Remarkable. As you’re now 57, I recommend that you quit smoking and start exercising, or you’ll have a heart attack too within the year.”

    “Pfffft! You already KNOW what happened to them; why should I believe that you can predict the future?”

  413. No, Trump is. They wouldn’t be able to absorb Hitlery’s attack, Trump could…he is much tougher.

  414. Regardless, those ignored factors must not contribute very much, since the same model has been backtested from 1912.

  415. I predicted the housing bubble and the tech bubble. I even predicted the current asset bubble and I am not a statistician. Moody’s must have some very bad statisticians.

  416. It is backtested using the raw data from past elections. Plug the historical numbers into the model and record the accuracy. If the tested results match the actual results, then the model can be relied upon within a specified margin of error.

  417. No, I can’t do all those things. But I know his reliable prediction is based on the outcome of the primaries, while this prediction is based on his (facially ridiculous and contrary to all polling) assumption that the rest of the Dem primaries will reflect an average of NH and the predicted outcome in S. Carolina. So, while the prediction he makes in June may be informative, this one is not.

  418. This is not the prediction you see every four years. That prediction comes at the end of the primaries. He’s selling this as “his prediction” because it gets him paid to do speeches. What really matters is what he predicts after the primaries are over.

  419. OTOH, Norpoth’s prediction is based ONLY on NH and the predicted S. Carolina result (for the Dems). He doesn’t use the caucuses and, more importantly, he incorrectly assumes that the average outcome of those two states will be the outcome in each state’s primary.

    There is a very good chance his prediction will be different at the end of the primaries. Whatever that prediction is, however, probably has a good chance of being right.

  420. polling suggests that if the well-educated vote, that will tend to favor Clinton or Sanders in a general election.

    You’re talking about what would happen if the well-educated vote the way you think is right. But that’s not really relevant.

  421. Actually, the model he used included assumed results in S. Carolina. The real problem, vis-a-vis he evaluation of a Clinton candidacy, is that he assumed that the entire primary would look like NH and S. Carolina (he does not use caucus results at all). That, of course, is likely incorrect. At least based on state-by-state polling, the outcome will look nothing like an average of NH and S. Carolina. It’s unlikely Sanders will have ANY landslide wins except VT and maybe one or two more at most. When you look at the final primaries, Hillary will look a lot better. I suspect the inverse will be true for Trump and the GOP primaries, but that isn’t as clear.

  422. Anything that doesn’t explicitly disfavor lower class white Americans is “bigotry and thuggery” according to liberals.

  423. I won’t argue on that point. Party selection processes are under no obligation to be truly Democratic. Democracy is a mostly sham and always has been.

  424. “highly educated people belonging to ethnic minorities”

    The smallest Demographic in the country.

  425. You have a 99% chance of dying if you jump off this particular bridge, so that means you have a chance to live, why don’t you try it? :^)

  426. Someone doesn’t know how predictive models are created, I see. Do you even have a college education?

  427. I don’t think he means Trump has no chance to win. I believe he is hinting at something darker, which I have feared since Trump started looking like he could win. The other day, some mook at National Review called for Trump’s assassination. He’ll say it was a joke, but he wasn’t kidding. Various Republican writers are working overtime, inciting violence against Trump. Of course, they won’t do it, but there are a lot of crazy people around these days, who don’t require much of a nudge.

    Nicholas Stix, Uncensored @Nicholas Stix

  428. He’s both! He deliberately channeled Regan, with his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” and he deliberately channeled Nixon, with his talk of “the silent majority.” Both men got tremendous support from Democratic voters. And Rubio and Cruz’ obsessive emphasis on being “conservative,” in terms the RNC and National Review like make them automatic losers in the general. Millions of Republican-leaning voters stayed home the last two elections, because they hate the Party leadership. And they hate the Party leadership, because after years of supporting the Party, they realized that the Party hates them, and had kept stabbing them in the back. Primary voters are voting against the media, and against the GOP.

    Nicholas Stix, Uncensored @Nicholas Stix

  429. No it doesn’t, you uninformed nimrod.

    The years of prosperity in the 20th century were:

    1921-1929 (arguable whether this was really prosperity or just a mirage later destroyed by the Depression):

    Harding was a teacher, briefly sold insurance, and eventually became owner of a local newspaper
    Coolidge was a practicing lawyer

    1945-73:
    Truman worked a variety of jobs before becoming a judge; he ran a hat shop for like two years that failed
    Eisenhower was, of course, a career soldier
    JFK was briefly a journalist after WWII and then went into politics almost immediately
    Lyndon Johnson was a teacher
    Nixon was a lawyer and bureaucrat

    Very few of any of the 19th-century presidents were businessmen, period (it doesn’t really matter because the president had little control over the economy in the pre-Federal Reserve years). So that’s maybe 1.2 out of seven presidents who can even remotely claim that it was their business experience that helped the economy – and I note that the 1 (Harding) basically ran a monopoly business with no real competition after managing to put his closest rival newspaper from his small town out of business. You have zero idea of what you’re talking about.

  430. Then you would also have to adjust for the voter fraud that occurred in 2000 when Al Gore should have beat Bush. Thousands of people were disenfranchised in Florida because they had the same last names as ex-convicts (who were also disenfranchised only in 2000 after bringing back an antiquated law).

  431. I was at the presentation on Monday and found the model, especially given its strong record, to be very convincing. As a side note, the JFK vs. Nixon election remains a matter of discussion to date (and was mentioned by the presenter) as a possible case of vote fabrication, particularly given LBJ’s penchant for that kind of politics and rampant voter fraud in Kennedy strongholds, like Chicago. So the failure of the model to predict that outcome becomes somewhat less mysterious.

    The model, from how it was presented, does have certain weaknesses. The weakness most relevant to this election pertains to the use of only two primaries as indicators of challenge within the parties. Norpoth predicts Trump to win because Hillary faced such a challenge from Bernie in New Hampshire, and it goes on to estimate how they will perform in South Carolina. The model assumes that the SC performance will be the reverse of NH. The combination of the SC estimation and the possibly skewed success of Bernie in NH (the native son phenomenon) potentially weaken analysis of Democratic odds. Therefore, if Hillary performs as estimated in SC (or better, as a Clemson poll suggests), and Bernie’s NH performance was indeed due to native sun status (especially given the local culture of the NH primary), then the model may be inaccurate, disproportionately underestimating Hillary’s odds.

    In any event, it was certainly an interesting approach, and one that informs in a far more historically relevant manner than many of the famed pundits.

  432. I’m not saying voter fraud didn’t exist, but Nixon didn’t contest the results particularly in Illinois because he knew there was also a lot of voter fraud in the Republican controlled areas of Illinois.

  433. The whole analysis is based on two flawed premises but I will only discuss one (and please forget about the %97 and %99 as they are only a sleight of hand: it is like saying if I have $55 and you only have $45, that chances that I have more than you is %97 and if your name is Bernie it is %99!)

    Here is one of the two serious flaws:
    How scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the How scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the assumption that Bernie’s chances of beating Trump is as good as Hillary’s?

    “Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]….Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.”

    Here are the facts:
    Bernie’s popular vote so far is 151,584 (%60.40) while Hillary has only 95,252 (%37.95)
    We also know that Bernie is popular with the Independents and some Republicans. I say, Trump might beat Hillary but he cannot beat Bernie. I have more things to say but for now it is important to debunk this pseudoscience.

  434. The whole analysis is based on two flawed premises but I only discuss one flaw and, please forget about the %97, %99 as they are only a sleight of hand!

    Here is one of the two serious flaws:
    How scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the How scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the assumption that Bernie’s chances of beating Trump is as good as Hillary’s?

    “Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]….Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.”

    Here are the facts:
    Bernie’s popular vote so far is 151,584 (%60.40) while Hillary has only 95,252 (%37.95)
    We also know that Bernie is popular with the Independents and some Republicans. I say, Trump might beat Hillary but he cannot beat Bernie. I have more things to say but for now it is important to debunk this pseudoscience.

  435. Prof. Norpoth is a political science PhD, not a blogging troll. Just change the word “prediction” to “correlation,” if that makes it easier for your simple minds to comprehend.

  436. How scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the assumption that Bernie’s chances of beating Trump is as good as Hillary’s?

    “Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]….Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.”

    Here are the facts:
    Bernie’s popular vote so far is 151,584 (%60.40) while Hillary has only 95,252 (%37.95)
    We also know that Bernie is popular with the Independents and some Republicans. I say, Trump might beat Hillary but he cannot beat Bernie. I have more things to say but for now it is important to debunk this pseudoscience.

  437. Simple, you run your model using the data collected from the primaries and other factors, then see if the result matches what the actual result was. Apparently the model got it spot on for every election for the past 100 years bar 1960, pretty remarkable really

  438. If the well educated were to actually get out and vote as you say, Trump will win by a landslide. ! History demonstrates when a businessman is at the helm, the country and economy thrives…America will be a economical entity again. Trump will usher in the new era of the roaring twenties…Take THAT to the bank… ( of course we all remember what happened next, but hey, at least better days are ahead)

  439. You know, the Republicans were saying this exact same thing when this very same model was used to predict an Obama victory.

    It’s called hypocrisy.

  440. So Moody’s made their prediction 10 months out from the election and Norpoth’s is 9 months out. Yeah, I’m sure that’ll be the differnce.

    Also, Norpoth is not over a hundred years old. He’s only been applying his model predictively since 1996. It’s pretty easy to adjust your model to be flawless with the benefit of hindsight.

    The rest of your post was just drivel.

  441. Because… Wonder boy. How can anyone have a true predictive model created…. AFTER the events?

    Furnish your bet losses to St. Jude’s.

  442. So this works IF the RNC chooses a win over the more establishment candidate that they know they can work with.

    This is still going to be interesting.

  443. Gullible. Some people are just damned gullible. Tell me. Please tell anyone with anyone with data skill. How can anyone have a mathematical model that predicted all the outcomes in the past…. AFTER the events?

  444. I can just picture the liberal Manhattan audience starting to fidget nervously as the professor explained to them that a Republican is going to win the presidential election:

    “…laughter turned to silence as Norpoth forecasted a 61 percent chance of a Republican win in the general election.”

    That’s too funny!!

  445. His primary model would be 100 percent correct since 1912, except that the Democrats stole the 1960 election with massive voter fraud in Illinois and Texas. That’s their way.

    Another interesting factor is that post-election studies showed that Kennedy did not lose votes because he was Catholic and that he actually received more votes from Catholics than he likely would have if he were not Catholic. So you could say that being Catholic helped him become President, rather than hindered him, despite all the talk about anti-Catholic prejudice at the time. Interesting…

  446. As someone else posted earlier in this thread, a link to this
    professor’s most relevant work on this topic is no longer supported but
    you can probably get more info directly from the professor by request. Just google: Professor Helmut Norpoth at SUNY Stony Brook.

  447. This way of doing the forecast puts a heavy reliance on the most recent data points. For example, if you were to rerun these numbers after a victory by large margins in SC for HRC, my guess is that it would be very different. Similarly, if she is able to build an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates over BS as quickly or more quickly than Trump, her prospects would improve enormously. So, trumpeting the result and heralding past accuracy seem misplaced, particularly if the assessment of this model’s past accuracy incorporated data from much closer to election day. The data used for 2016 are from ten months out from the election; I believe we have no idea whether his model is accurate for past elections using only data from 10 months or more ahead of election day.

  448. Norpoth’s prediction is based on extrapolating data from previous elections… to predict those same elections.

    I mean, it would be worth something if he’s been predicting the elections for decades, but we don’t know how long he’s been doing this and we can’t even analyze the data. This smells like bull.

  449. Um…Norpoth didn’t make the prediction in 1960. Because that was 56 years ago. Literally anybody can create a model in hindsight and say “hey look! It works!” It’s not that this person is wrong. It’s that his grasp of statistics appears to be very poor for a plumber, much less a statistician.

  450. Is there a link to the professor’s model with any detail? The article provided nothing in the way of methodology though I suspect most of it is not suitable to a general audience, to dispense with any specifics at all is a disservice to readers.

  451. The well-educated has got to get out and vote. If Trump becomes president it would be a disaster for America, a real embarrassment. The man is a clown.

  452. Moody’s prediction is more than a month old. That’s before Iowa and NH. Jerry’s comparison is as dishonest and deceptive as what we will be hearing from every liberal hoping for more Obama crap from a Hillary Sanders presidency. Real Americans have had enough. Oh, and remember Norpoth’s only failed prediction was the 1960 election that was stolen by Dem’s in Texas (Johnson) and Illinois (Daley). So actually, Norpoth has been flawless, thus far.

  453. But what’s not discussed here is the early stage of this prediction. The model is discussed as taking into account “primary performance.” It’s quite early. And there’s no discussion here as to the accuracy of the model this early in the phase; have these predictions always been done in February and been correct at this rate? Or do prior predictions take into account ENTIRE primary seasons? I suspect very strongly the latter given the description.

  454. Don’t forget it’s the map that elects the President aka College Map….And Hillary has a big advantage in that.

  455. Pay no attention to Marty. He’s looking for comments to criticize , while having nothing of substance to offer.

  456. “However from the contests held so far, this year’s election cycle is becoming an major outlier, more so in the Republican Party, but with the Democrats as well, so even if the statistical model was accurate in the past, I am not as sure that previous metrics would be as successfully indicative.”
    Becoming “AN MAJOR OUTLIER” … Hilarious, you fucking hypocritical moron.

  457. I see your Helmut Norpoth and raise you a Moody’s forecast. Moody’s predicts the Democrats will win the White House in 2016 and they’ve never neen wrong in 35 years. They even have a 90% record of predicting the result in every single state since 1980.

    One of them will be wrong I suppose. We’ll see.

  458. Sorry, I thought I would be of help, the way you write I naturally thought that you were not a native speaker of the English language.
    Apparently I was wrong, you simply have limited vocabulary and composition skills. If you have the cognitive ability I suggest some remedial coursework, check out your local adult education program, they may be able to help you.

  459. They did the same thing in 1980 showing Carter would beat Reagan until about two weeks before the election. Heck, everybody else knew Carter was toast as soon as he left two helicopters smoking in the Iranian desert.

  460. LOL! I remember being convinced that McGovern was “going to shock the world” with a massive win over Nixon. Of course, I was a college student at the time and didn’t know a soul who wasn’t voting for good old George.

  461. I have never voted for a Lefty in my life and that includes the Lefties who run with a big R next to their name. Don’t kill over. The expression comes from when your heart stops and you fall on your face. I say what I want the way I want to DH.

  462. Them too? If you think it is a good thing to limit free speech to one side or the other then you are the “nut job” with the issue. That makes you no different than the Leftists idiots who Trump has a long history of backing verbally and financially.

  463. Obama has deported more illegals than Bush. I am not opposed to deporting illegals. However, the law is actually not that clear. It is rather complex and no president has [or will] circumvent the courts and the law to deport 12 million illegals. Think about it. 12 million! Also my point is Trump’s plan to have Mexico pay for the wall is pure tough guy rhetoric. It excites his base but won’t happen. Also, Trump’s opinion plays a big part in his rhetoric. His claim Mexico is sending rapists and such being a prime example.

  464. Because Sanders has won the one and only actual primary election whereas Clinton has won caucus states where the turnout tends to be much smaller. That will all presumably change as of next week.

  465. Both Clinton and Bush deported over 10 million illegals in their entire terms. With no wall to keep them from coming back it did little good. Making Mexico pay for the wall will be very fast via intercepting the 24 Billion of stolen US money illegals send to Mexico via electronic transfer like Western Union. Deporting a few million alone will cut into that 200+ Billion tax payers pony up for illegals and pay for a few walls. Leftist are funny, they like to ridicule Trump as if his stance on immigration is his personal opinion. Its current federal law dumb asses. We just need someone in there to follow current immigration law.

  466. I’ve been saying this for 2 weeks. Trump 54/ Hillary 45. Done deal. The polls they show on TV claiming Clinton would win are pure propaganda.

  467. You’re forgetting the fact that there is a campaign. Bernie has the blessings of being liberal and therefore nothing he says is scrutinized by the MSM, which is where libs get their news. Socialism/communism is ananchor to a US politician, especially in an atmosphere of optimism like the one Trump generates. Bernie will have a hard time getting the support he needs. Without stats: any republicans gonna vote for Bernie? probably not. Any Democrats gonna vote for Trump? Polls say yes, and that number will grow among working democrats. Trump will get a significant share of hispanice and blacks. He will win against the socialist or the criminal.

  468. Well he’ll probably mellow out a lot during the general. I wouldn’t be surprised if he visits a mosque and chats up some mexican immigrants to reverse the negative polarity.

  469. Hillary is LOW ENERGY, and one of the most corrupt politicians ever conceived.

    It’s honestly hilarious that she’s been reduced to nothing more than a protest vote against Trump, who is the real star of the show.

  470. Hmmm, you’re overlooking the fact that the Dem. primary popular votes in several cases were so close that they had to be resolved by ‘coin tosses’ and ‘card cutting’ — miraculously, Hillary has won all of these tie-breakers.

  471. It was developed in 1996 and has minor revision since, per the professor’s 2012 news release linked on his university about page.

  472. Because the site that used to host it (2012 version) expired. Because the author was too lazy to as the professor for a copy of the presentation. You can google the guy or better the professor and ask him for a copy though his address is public.

  473. OMG Bernie supporters are the worst at pie in the sky expectations and elementary argument. They are so annoying that it will be an absolute joy to watch as they are disappointed and disengaged. Best show of the 2016 Circus.

  474. …and Trump is ahead in Florida.

    Also as noted, the model takes into account the absolute beatdowns laid by Trump in NH and SC primaries. And if anything, the Nevada primary results only confirm the model’s prediction.

  475. Why doesn’t the article provide a link to the work, so that people can scrutinize the research?

  476. Funny how many tin foil hat wearing liberal nut jobs are helplessly paralyzed with the “Trump is the next Hitler” hysteria.

  477. Yeah, you probably have stronger credentials that the political scientist who crafted the model and who has correctly predicted the president with said model for decades.

  478. Good God, you are actually looking at the actions of Nazi Germany as a model of success! I’d like to think you are kidding but when you talk about the interest of ‘traditional Americans’ then I guess you really mean it. Wow. Your view is far scarier than anything Trump has proposed.

  479. There is no indication of when the model was first used, if the model was made up recently then it could be result driven, however if it has been around for a number of election cycles, AND the modeling was not changed to make it appear more accurate than it otherwise would be, then that would add to its credibility.

    However from the contests held so far, this year’s election cycle is becoming an major outlier, more so in the Republican Party, but with the Democrats as well, so even if the statistical model was accurate in the past, I am not as sure that previous metrics would be as successfully indicative.

  480. The Constitution has been dying since Lincoln overthrew it to save the Union. With every president more power gets accumulated in the executive branch. The only exception is the Supreme Court which consists of unelected jurists who make rulings without concern for the actual words of the Constitution or the intent of the men who drafted it. Under these circumstances, we might as well have a strong man who will at least act in the interests of traditional Americans. As to the logistics, it is quite possible to deport 12 million or even 30 million. We just need to find the will. We are constantly told that during WW2 Germany was able to round up 11 million people. If they could do it more than 70 years ago, we can certainly do it today.

  481. Trump ‘cannot’ beat Bernie?
    You said “Bernie is popular with the Independents and some Republicans”. True. But those R’s are the anti-establishment ones. They could possibly vote Bernie if the RNC gives them yet another establishment pick (Rubio). That’s why the gap drops to 0.6%.
    But if the anti-establishment wing of the RNC gets Trump, the only R’s who Trump would lose would be the establishment-leaning ones. And they wouldn’t vote Bernie, they’d just stay home.
    I don’t support Trump, but I recognize that he ‘can’ win. The RNC and DNC didn’t realize that until it was too late.

  482. So using the government as a tool of brute force is acceptable to you? I’ll be you hate the government because you think they might confiscate your guns but you have no problem using them to kick in doors to get illegals? Here’s a guarantee; Trump will not be able to deport 12 million.

  483. The problem with your claim that Trump can’t do what he says is that you assume that Trump can be constrained by the normal means such as courts and the legislature. When the courts try to block deportation of illegals and Trump orders ICE agents to proceed anyways, the real fun will begin..

  484. Show me a link where it shows Obama said this. Did he really mean to erase our borders? Did he mean state borders or our borders with Canada and Mexico? Sounds to me like Obama was being more figurative than literal.

  485. This probability model has proven the most reliable predictor of the next POTUS of any–by far! Of course, it ignites criticism and outrage. But, it does what it does, and predicts what it predicts. And like it or not–it is predicting Trump will be the next POTUS (IF he wins the GOP nomination).

  486. I did read that, point taken. My point still stands, though. Using a model to predict things that have already happened is not admissible IMO.

  487. I bet they went against the “polling data” in the early months of 1980, and some other years too. But why don’t you ask the professor, he’s got a public email address, and he used to publish the model publicly (the site expired though), it’s
    not something he really keeps a secret – hence his presentation about
    the model as discussed in the article.

    Contact info: stonybrook dot edu/commcms/polisci/professors/norpoth.html

  488. Well, you have to believe that the military would adhere to the orders from the Feds…and history has proven that in those circumstances the military fractures. Perhaps that is why it has always been a wet dream of the Dems to have a gun registry.

  489. I love seeing this model every 4 years. The response is almost always the same. Look below to find outrage, name calling, and denial. Then he turns out to be right.

    I don’t like Trump, but I always thought his most difficult task was securing the GOP nomination. The general election is an easier sell with his brand of populism.

  490. Not a sentence. Now if you take one of those verbs and change it into a noun and combine two of the remaining verbs you actually can make a sentence out of that sentiment, try this

    “Polls are Bullshit”

    see how that works,.

  491. as also noted Trump is slightly ahead in the state of Ohio which suggests he’d can win if he’s ahead there.

  492. You said: “His predictions go against all the poling data we have now”.

    Which is factually incorrect based on the Ohio poll. Dead heat or not.

  493. Except he did not say that it predicted every election since 1912, the article clearly said

    “every presidential election since 1912, with the notable exception of the 1960
    election. These results give the model an accuracy of 96.1 percent.”

    Please read the articles before you comment, it makes for a more cohesive and logical discourse.

  494. Right, but betting on his results without knowing how he derives at his conclusions is also foolish. As noted current polling shows Clinton winning. I’d be curious to see how he gets his results rather than just blindly believe him.

  495. The polling I have found says it is a dead heat in Ohio. 44-42 is certainly within the range of a tie. Let’s see what it says in October.

  496. Trump has a 99% chance of beating Sanders, so what you are saying is that Bernie has a chance to win.

  497. Do any of you who are calling this professor a “clown” or are otherwise dismissing him have ANY experience at all in statistics? Could you compute a standard deviation if your life depended upon it? How about a regression analysis? Or a Chi Square test? Or is this just a matter of you putting your pants on the same way as he does, therefore your opinion, ignorant though it is, is as good as his? If I had to bet money on this, I wouldn’t bet on your comments because I see no evidence that you have any idea what you are talking about.

  498. FWIW A recent poll in Ohio shows Trump beating Clinton in the general election. It was 44-42 as of now. Ohio is is pretty much the belle-weather state these days.

    This model is almost always right.

  499. This isn’t even a question. Bernie might only win a handful of states in a general election.

  500. Interesting analysis and it’s sure to generate outrage but that’s expected.
    This was my sense without the statistical data.

  501. Public deception at its best!
    How scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the assumption that Bernie’s chances of beating Trump is as good as Hillary’s?

    “Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]….Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.”

    Here are the facts:
    Bernie’s popular vote so far is 151,584 (%60.40) while Hillary has only 95,252 (%37.95)
    We also know that Bernie is popular with the Independents and some Republicans. I say, Trump might beat Hillary but he cannot beat Bernie. I have more things to say but for now it is important to debunk this pseudoscience. It is pathetic when those who claim to be scientists deceive the public using their authority.

  502. Agreed, I have been crunching numbers on a state by state level. Donnie Runaway gets His backside handed to Him based on the most recent polls. The GOP’s best chance is Rubio whether the Democrats nominate Hillary or Bernie.

  503. Public deception at its best!
    How scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the assumption that Bernie’s chances of beating Trump is as good as Hillary’s? (check the link to original article “reports The Statesman” above.)

    “Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]….Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.”

    Here are the facts:
    Bernie’s popular vote so far is 151,584 (%60.40) while Hillary has only 95,252 (%37.95)
    We also know that Bernie is popular with the Independents and some Republicans. I say, Trump might beat Hillary but he cannot beat Bernie. I have more things to say but for now it is important to debunk this pseudoscience. It is pathetic when those who claim to be scientists deceive the public using their authority.

  504. Really, where is this “praise” supposed to be found?

    His prediction is nonsensical, that’s why I call him a clown.

  505. That’s not anger, that’s truth. Most of what Trump claims he can do are things he actually cannot do. Literally. Export 12 million illegals, build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, bring back jobs to America. All rhetoric. You want to see anger? if Trump wins, his supporters will get angry when they realize he can’t do what he says.

  506. His predictions go against all the poling data we have now. Cruz and Rubio actually beat Clinton head to head while Trump is down 5% or so. I’d like to see his primary model methods. Saying the model predicted every election since 1912 sounds specious at best.

  507. Sanders can’t win. The DNC changes its rules to support Hillary plus she has the superdelegates, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, and the female vote. Sanders’ core constituency is primarily college-age males, and they don’t vote in enough numbers to equal their enthusiasm. There is a very big chance that Sanders shuts down his campaign in about two weeks.

  508. My Scientific Prediction, and you better believe me, is that this poster who calls himself TimothyMacAren is a rabid Far Left-wing extremist nutjob, as a such hates/envies the improvement of other people than his, and is an admirer of Joseph Goebbels (and Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Satan), that one that crafted the axiom “If you repeat a lie 1,000 times, the lie becomes a reality.” Somebody is paying him out to advertise this stupidity.

  509. Amazing how the Left was praising this model last election and the one before, but now calls this guy a clown.

    You guys are beyond simple minded.

  510. These predictions are always suspect, but for this one we’ll know the answer in just 9 months, and it’s pretty harmless if he gets it wrong. Compare that to global warming predictions for which the predictors and politicians will NEVER be accountable.

  511. I can see being upset with his prediction, but calling this professor a clown, and getting angry at him makes no sense, and is just irrational and unintelligent. He’s not saying he want Trump, or hopes it’s Trump. He’s saying that he has a statistical model/tool that has made a prediction. In the past, he’s predicted liberal presidents too. The knee jerk “I hate this clown” reaction is so pathetic. Politics really does bring out the stupidest and most pathetic in people

  512. That’s now “skewering.” That’s a predictable and logical consequence that can be measured, i.e., ethnic diversity. We had a tax rate of 90% and built the world with a strong middle class. Raising taxes by G.H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton resulted in a budget balancing surplus that ended deficit spending — and that was only raising taxes by 3%. Taxes will and should go up, and yet the dems are still the majority party. Go figure.

  513. President Trump is going to be a huge boost to America and her working families
    — One of the workers Disney fired and forced to train his foreign replacement is scheduled to testify before Congress Thursday, when he will share his story and plead with lawmakers to recognize it as part of a nationwide problem with the H-1b visa program.

  514. The model might be wrong, but only in that ethnic diversity is going to skew elections in the United States in the favour of the Democrats, right up until the system of raising taxes or debts and redistributing the income from that ceases to work.

  515. Among the general population, I think Sanders enjoys less popularity than Clinton if anything. The problem Sanders has is that he scores well with young white people, but not so much with anyone else, because he tailors his views to what young white college students want to hear.

    So it’s easy for young white people to think that Sanders has a good chance of winning, but outside young white people his support is lagging behind. The elderly, middle-aged women, highly educated people belonging to ethnic minorities – they’re more likely to vote than young white people, and they’re more likely to go for an established candidate like Hillary Clinton.

  516. By the time Reagan left office, the USA was riding pretty high, thus Bush. Even HRC and Sanders decry the state of domestic affairs in their quest to become Obama’s successor.

    Agree with your general premise, however. I think anyone who has a electoral model that can ‘accurately predict with 97% accuracy’ is living in Sim City…

  517. Now how scientific is this statement regarding Sanders if it is based on the assumption that Bernie chances of beating Trump is as good as Hillary’s?
    ““Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]….Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.”

  518. There’s a reason why common sense is important. Here’s a guy that says Trump will win 53 to 47 % with a 97% of that happening. It reminds me of the scene from Police Story when the police captain said to Lt. Frank Drevon, the doctor’s give him a 50-50 chance of survivial– but there’s only a 10% chance of that.
    Sure, Trump is so popular that the 73% unfavorability among Hispanics, for instance, means that either they don’t come out to vote, or they vote for Trump. LOL.
    This methodology is all skewered. The model’s biasedness is against a third term by the same party, and he crows that his prediction that a first term president won a second term, means…. what? First term presidents probably are likely to win a second term, despite Carter and Bush.

  519. The current system does not provide some kind of check on the “mobs.” There have been 22,991 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 17 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector’s own political party. 1796 remains the only instance when the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome.

    The electors are and will be dedicated party activist supporters of the winning party’s candidate who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.

    The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).

    There is no reason to think that the Electoral College would prevent Trump from being elected President of the United States.

  520. You are kidding, right? I know there’s a lot of ‘anger’ out there regarding the US political system and divisiveness but to suggest that we couldn’t see things become chaotic under misguided Trump policies is very worrisome. Again, I’m hoping he’s smart enough to know that he can’t do the things he proposes and only hyping the gullible into voting for a ‘winner’…

  521. The professor’s model is premised as much upon popular vote for the delegates as it is upon the delegates themselves. Hillary and Bernie are essentially tied in terms of popular votes cast for delegates, with Hillary’s giant advantage due to her getting ‘super-delegates’ who are not popularly voted for.

  522. so just because you disagree with him doesn’t make his prediction less scientific and accurate. For you to think that Sanders can win the nomination is a complete joke.

  523. @TimothyMacAren: On the ratemyprofessors site his own students describe him not as a rabid conservative but rather as an obamoth. Since they are speaking from direct experience, and you are not, why should I “better believe [you]”? With such talents for prediction you better not try making money at betting, either.
    My take on it is that it is some sort of a hillaryite propaganda piece.

  524. “I expect a massive smear campaign to start”

    I guess you haven’t been watching the news for the past 6 months. The harder they smear Trump, the better he does, which is paradoxical unless you consider Trump’s rise to be the result of popular discontent with the media/political establishment.

  525. One would think it might be, however, anecdotally, I can name 7 democrats I know who are all in for Trump – 2 white, 3 black, 2 Hispanic. I also know a good handful of democrats who are feeling the Bern, but who will vote Trump if Bernie is not on the ticket and Trump is. Anecdotal for sure, but I don’t think the amount of support he is pulling from traditional democrat demographics is something “the experts” are really grasping yet (nor are they grasping the well-educated support he’s getting)… I mean, every one of the 7 democrats who will be voting Trump I mentioned have either a law degree, a medical degree or a phd. I think whatever is going on with Trump is something no one is really able to gauge… and based on my anecdotal friends mentioned, as well as my FB feed etc.? It would not surprise me to see him win, win big, and get a lot of support from those who traditionally support the democrats…

  526. Trump has a chip on his shoulder about America and wants to destroy it? Trump has no accomplishments in his life or ever held a real job? You sound like a total moron with that Trump is a white Obama crap.

  527. Only in the sense that something similar was inevitable and predictable as a reaction to the years of obamery. Indeed, one could argue that had obaa not happened, neither would Donald Trump.

  528. He couldn’t be. They are not even close. Sanders clearly wins the popular vote in every primary.

  529. Blow it up–right? Trump can’t do what he claims and will disappoint many of his gullible followers as well as endanger world stability…

  530. When there are two clear front runners the percentage of delegates recovered from cheating would go almost entirely to the other front runner. A big part of the premise of this article is that Hillary and Bernie are tied with some advantage going to Hillary.

    Chances are that that is false. GIGO.

  531. I believe he’s talking about the popular vote in these primaries and doesn’t take super delegates into consideration at all.

  532. Sad that the republican establishment like Mitt Romney are trashing their own front runner, even using the Democrats own dirty tactics.
    Just sad what has happened to Reagan’s party.

    If Trump wins despite both parties trying to stop him, it will be the greatest accomplishment in political history.

  533. Your suggested analysis would only further downgrade Hillary’s general election prospects.

  534. ‘If you disagree with me, I’m going to compare you to a Nazi’

    That’s intellectually lazy and dishonest and only shows your own innate intolerance.

  535. You raise an interesting distinction — but is it significant enough to make a large statistical difference in the model’s successful prediction rate?

    There are multitudes of variables that can be found in every real-world system, but when you model that system you don’t have to control for every single one of them for your model to have reliability.

  536. Rubio will be forced on him by the RNC as a deal to support him. It will be alright though. He can pick Ivanka in his second term.

  537. 47% of Hispanic Nevada Republicans voted for Trump over two Hispanics. Seems legal Hispanics who worked hard for citizenship don’t much appreciate people coming in illegally and taking their jobs at lower pay. Likewise, Trump has at least the level of support that previous Republicans did with blacks. Seems blacks also don’t like illegals taking their jobs.

  538. What is the source for your prediction? Can you layout the data you are using to make your prediction?

  539. If this “scientific” professor’s predictions are so accurate, why he’s not making money at betting? He is a fluke.

    My Scientific Prediction, and you better believe me, is that this “scientist” is a rabid Conservative, as a such hates/envies the improvement of other people than his, and is an admirer of Joseph Goebbels, that one that crafted the axiom “If you repeat a lie 1,000 times, the lie becomes a reality.” Somebody is paying him out to advertise this stupidity.

  540. This analysis treats the Democratic primary results as legitimate. I’d be curious to see a separate analysis that factors in the anomalies. Super delegates…. 6 out of 6 coin toss wins (the DNC never stated how many or who tossed a coin that won for Bernie so I treat that as a lie), etc….

  541. “”Rubio is the candidate we most fear” story…but no one is buying that except for Rubio” Not just Rubio but they establishment fools running the party are buying it, just like they did when they pick Songbird McCain and Romney, two of the biggest wimps ever to run. The Republican elitist “Leadership” are the stupidest people alive, they let the Dems pick their candidate every time. They picked all losers Ford, Daddy Bush the second time when he didn’t run on Reagan’s record but his own, Dole, McCain and Romney, losers all and the one guy they said couldn’t win, Reagan, won in two huge landslides including winning 49 of the 50 States and 525 out of 538 electoral votes. Trump is also bringing in voters from the Democrat party, just like Reagan did, blue collar workers and Union people. Trump is also capturing many of the Black and Hispanic minorities votes, all of the people the Establishment claims they need to get to win, they just don’t want the only guy capable of getting their vote because they, the party, don’t own Trump.

  542. I trust that Trump is savvy enough to be aware of risk and to be vigilant enough to protect against them. Extremely wealthy people like him have long experience at being targets.

  543. Americans are sick and tired of the establishment politicians on both sides of the political fence destroying their once great country.

    ITS TIME FOR A CHANGE

  544. There are ways to remedy what so-called ‘unfaithful electors’ do.

    Believe me, the pushback would be yuuge.

  545. I agree. I am impressed with Trump. He’s the best since Reagan. I haven’t been excited about any political person since Reagan then along comes Trump! I love his leadership position position on cracking down on illegal immigration, his view on jobs for Americans, his repeal of the death tax and so many other issues.
    TRUMP 2016!

  546. I never said there wouldn’t be. Look at all of the Bush negative consequences, their Supreme Court nominees, Souter and Roberts. Even the great Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court picks screwed us often, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy. The only Good one he gave us was the Great Antonin Scalia and Bush somehow let a Conservative get through in Clarence Thomas. That was just lucky for America, I’m sure if daddy Bush knew he was a Conservative he never would have nominated him. Trump, while not perfect, is still a thousand times better than RINO Rubio, Trump isn’t owned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and will close the border down. The difference between Trump, Carson and Cruz is that Trump will win. They appear to be the only pro-America candidates running, all of the others are open borders one world internationalists. America first.

  547. There is no perfect candidate. You pick the best choice available. And you don’t expect any single person to be the solution to every conceivable problem — although 0bama fans would certainly disagree.

  548. I’m sure you were either trying for funny, or insightful and funny, but it seems like it failed really badly.

  549. Actually, we HOPED Romney would win but many of us, myself included, held our noses as we supported him.

    By contrast, I support Trump enthusiastically, warts and all, since I feel he’s the best fit for the job.

  550. True.

    And I also believe that a large part of Trump’s negatives comes from people who don’t like Trump’s anti-PC language and behaviors.

    But many of those same people respect his accomplishments and trust that he loves America and will do those things which the American majority has wanted Congress to do but they haven’t.

    As a result, many people will still vote for Trump even though they view some of his behavior unfavorably.

  551. Not really. As someone pointed out, he already beats her in polling, and when the primary is over, he’ll pound her into the turf like jeb Bush. She has none of the shrewdness of Bill, or the charm of Obama. She’s not even the hillary of 2008. She’s shrill, wodden, awkward, unlikable, unattractive, and a bit slow. And she’s plagued with scandals.

  552. Great. So instead of Hillary the Progressive Pathological Liar we’ll have Trump the Progressive Authoritarian.

  553. This is interesting but I think his system isn’t exactly a 1 to 1 on his successes. All 3 success he notes are all 2nd term incumbents not in fields where it is 2 non-incumbents.

  554. Sorry, you’re still not making any sense. How is it demographically impossible? See, that’s what happens to your reasoning center in the brain when you are too preoccupied being gay.

  555. Demographically speaking, all indicators point to a sufficient defection of Black, Hispanic, and blue-collar unionist votes from the traditional Dem. coalition over to the new Trump coalition to make a 55% Trump victory highly likely.

  556. Looks like Trump is going to have to increase his security, the Clinton’s are DANGEROUS. There is always unexplained deaths when they are arround.
    (Bushs, too.).

  557. This has been a very long time coming. The Republican Party represents no ideals or ideology beyond the ever escalating grasping greed of its leadership. At least with Democrats you get a pleasant tapestry of lies to cover their short sighted self serving agenda, but with the Republicans they clearly explain what the right thing to do is, and then they flatly refuse to do it in the most obnoxiously condescending and arrogant way possible. A vote for Trump is a vote for the dissolution of the corrupt and incompetent Republican party.

  558. Brilliant! You edit your comment after I pointed out the fool you are. The logic center in you brain was extracted when you started voting for liberals, didn’t it?

  559. Its the most amazing thing I have ever watched happen in my lifetime. I would have laughed out loud at you 6 months ago if you would have told me Trump was going to get the nomination let alone win the national election – I still am not sure that the “Trump fever” will spread through the general population like it has in the primaries – but I say that with little confidence because Trump is winning the primaries not with the traditional or far-right Republicans or the Tea Party types but with a much more eclectic group than I ever imagined – union Democrats are even “taking a look at Trump”…I still won’t believe it until I wake up on the morning after the election and it is reality…I still think Hillary will somehow pull it out with all of her big money wall street connections and deep political skills and connections but who knows…this election season has been one surprise after another….

  560. Republican establishment will choose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. They don’t care about their party. They care about their global trade deals and special interests. Donald Trump is a threat to their existing order of backroom deals and deception, which Hillary Clinton is guaranteed to continue. I expect a massive smear campaign to start on Trump tonight with the debate and continue until the end of the general. It already started yesterday with Mitt Romney, a proven loser, speculating on Donald Trump’s taxes a “bombshell” with literally zero evidence.

  561. We can all look forward to the train wreck of Hillary’s epic implosion. I’m not sure she won’t actually melt like the wicked witch she is. Poor Bill…..

  562. …and there’s the further prospect that, unless 0bama pardons her on his way out the door, a losing Hillary might even be criminally prosecuted in a Trump administration. How rich would that be!

  563. HOPE AMERICA CHANGE AGAIN! Vote Donack O’Bump – because America deserves a YUGE LOSER.

  564. Donald Trump will be the next Ronald Regan. And I remember the establishment and media attacking Regan just like they are Trump now.

    I did not listen to those clowns then, and I won’t this time either.

    Trump 2016!

  565. Im not even a Professor but i knew he was gonna be the Nominee 6mos. ago. Its not rocket science. He is drawing 10-20k people everywhere he goes. That should tell you something. And guess what else ? He is gonna win the Presidency too.

  566. I wonder if his model takes into account the lying, cheating, and stealing that Dems traditionally resort to during the elections.

  567. Do you know what is going to be more amusing? All the mouth foaming liberals a day after Trump is elected president. haha

  568. You are a idiot if you do not think TRUMP will wipe the floors with killary! he knows her health is not good and alot more! and will play the MSM AND LIB MEDIA LIKE THEY ARE HIS PETS! Rubio and Cruz would get tar and feathered in the GEN . NOT TRUMPY he is the GOP ONLY CHANCE!

  569. Trump is beating her in the polls now. And he hasnt even started on her yet. Maybe she wants to defend her positions as Secretary of State.

  570. The problem with that is it isn’t the MSM “narrative,” it’s his own. His problems arise from his own words. If anything, the MSM “narrative” has brought him this far. No one else has gotten half as much free media.

  571. enjoy your smug attitude while you can. You’ll be crying your bitter racist tears soon enough.

  572. Trump will win in a landslide. And he will change the political map by winning states usually won by democrats.

  573. Ah the liberals finally rear their ugly head. No facts or data mind you, just insults and eventually charges of racism. But it’s what we’ve all come to expect from the party of “inclusion”.

  574. I really hope Trump has additional people protecting him in addition to the Secret Service. There is no telling what the Clintons and Obama would do.

  575. gaylib found out he will have to now go to work at the 7 – 11 as the welfare checks will stop.

  576. Trump vs. Clinton is the race the country and world wants and deserves. It will be truly epic and watching her crash and burn will be vindication for many Republicans who had to suffer through her husbands tenure.

  577. Anyone who thinks Trump can win a general election has no credibility at all. He’s an attention whore.

  578. You’re forgetting the number of Bernie voters who will vote Trump to keep Hillary out of office. Looking at a landslide in the general election. Unless the dead rise to vote again, of course.

  579. My first choice in not Trump, but if he could stop Hillary and the Clinton Machine and reverse Obama’s policies, he would, in 50 years, be listed as one of the five greatest presidents and maybe even in 2066 would have a national consensus to be the fifth one put on Rushmore…..even with the hair.

  580. I don’t even know what you’re blabbering about. Sounds like you get into some kinky shit though.

  581. Trump’s “negatives” will continue to decrease, as people get to know him better and move past the MSM narrative firewall of lies and garbage they’ve said about him.

  582. He’s been right multiple times before, so he has credibility. Poor liberal didn’t like what mean professor said so he calls him “moron.” lol.

  583. That is the dumbest use of a model ever and ignores the Anyone But Trump vote that is out there. Trump has a dedicated following that will vote for him, but the only reason he is leading for his party is that there are too many other candidates against him. There is a majority of voters who have a strong negative view of Trump and his policies. In the Presidential race itself, if he gets the nomination you will have all the democrats and half the republicans voting against him to keep him out of office.

  584. Wonder if Trump and the family will hug the Queen? Will he land the Nobel Prize just because he’s so…Trumpish? Is he likely to give the Constitution a reach-around? Has his wife always been female? Will Putin doubt if he has a set?

  585. and I want an America where ALL can speak their minds without fear of recrimination. That is what I gave four years of my life to defend!

  586. I hope you’re wrong. Reagan granted amnesty to millions of illegals and paid reparations to tens of thousands of unpatriotic Japanese Americans who had to be relocated because of military necessity. Reagan supplied weapons and money to Al Qaeda’s jihadist predecessor in Afghanistan, the Mujaheddin. His administration — remember Ollie North? — illegally sold advanced weapons to Iranian terrorists.

  587. When she defeats Trump in a landslide it will be so sweet watching you guys screaming and wailing yet again. Remember how everyone of you was soo sure Romney would win? Good times.

  588. To all who bother to read my statement above, I HOPE AND PRAY I AM WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  589. Trump is a racist clown. He will be trounced by Hillary. Will be so good to see you people get your hopes up yet again only to be dashed by the people you hate.

  590. You are possibly right. It still does not account for eliminating him from the election by “other means”.

  591. The other thing to take into consideration is that Trump hasn’t even begun to target her. She made one swipe at him about being sexist, he counterpunched and all of a sudden her numbers against Sanders tanked. He is the LAST person she wants to face in a general because nothing will be off the table. The Clinton’s are known for fighting dirty…but Trump is actually more adept at that if need be…after all, he had to fight NYC government AND the mob bosses. They show how ignorant they believe the Republicans to be by floating the “Rubio is the candidate we most fear” story…but no one is buying that except for Rubio. Trump is the one they fear and who they have no idea how to fight against. Trump loves the media…the Clintons try to hide from it and deflect.

  592. I want a right wing strongman and ruling junta in power for awhile to take care of business–make Democrats and RINOs afraid of their own shadows and shut them up even in the confines of their own homes. I want left wingers building closets in their closets where they’ll chose to spend most of their time out of fear for their lives. Is that too much to hope for?

  593. The only people voting for Hillary are brainwashed, Blue Pill Sheep who believe whatever the media tells them.

  594. The fact that you think Nixon was a “solid” president proves my point. He was a liberal RINO POS who implemented a numerous programs and federal institutions that are the downfall of this nation. The EPA alone is ruining America.

  595. And where’d you get your poli sci and statistics degrees from genius? You people are pathetic.

  596. Trump is going to not only get the “never vote” crowd, but also the blue collar middle class who have been decimated under Obama’s policies.

  597. Though they have tried the same a number of times since….

    Watch for their game plan this time around:
    1) Disenfranchise the military by conveniently “misplacing” their votes until after the election.
    2) Let illegals vote, then register (like in Nevada). They don’t even need to be a US citizen.
    3) When faces with low Dem turnouts due to poor candidates, resort to filling in votes for registered Dems on the roll. They will mysteriously appear after the polls close and the Dems will demand they be counted as legit. After all, wouldn’t they have voted for Hillary if they had showed up?

  598. The country is already in a “death spiral” and the feds have already stocked the weapons and ammunition to deal with your scenario. It would also complete the “chaos” part” to create “order” from..

  599. I think he is correct, only because there is no way Hillary can ever get more than 47.5% of the vote.

  600. and you can’t even manage to do that. What a fucking loser. Go back to picking the line out of your navel.

  601. “Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent [of the popular vote]. ” This is literally impossible.

  602. You honestly believe that if electors do not vote the way the people have directed that the people would put up with that? That is the definition of a political coup and would result in a civil war against the government. It would be the ultimate violation of the public trust and would begin the death spiral for the nation.

  603. Everyone who has gone against Trump has gone down, and Hillary has a treasure chest of scandals.

  604. His career in academics is over…. Doesn’t matter if he is right or not. The liberal elite won’t tolerate Hillary being called a “loser.” She is participating after all and deserves her coronation as POTUS for just showing up.

  605. That is why I have to laugh everytime somebody tries to point out Trump was a Democrat at one time. Reagan was one also 🙂 I still however dont think he will be “allowed” to make it to the general election.

  606. Why is Donald Trump the right leader at just the right time?
    — The Washington insiders who work to get Chinese deals approved:
    WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – A spate of proposed Chinese takeovers of
    U.S. companies, from the Chicago Stock Exchange to makers of high-end
    semiconductors, has created a vibrant business for a small circuit of
    Washington insiders who advise on how to get cross-border deals approved
    by the U.S. government. Several former U.S. officials have in recent years joined the ranks of lawyers, consultants and lobbyists that have emerged as key brokers in
    trying to get Chinese acquisitions or investments in U.S. companies
    approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
    (CFIUS), which scrutinizes deals for national security concerns.

  607. Florida too and voting for Trump. I hope he doesn’t pick Judas Iscariot Rubio as his running mate.

  608. We have all been suffering the consequences and losing because of the Nixon presidency. Besides the negative political fallout we have a RINO Nixon to thank for beauties like the EPA and Affirmative Action. Just because you like Trump doesn’t mean that there won’t be negative consequences.

  609. Wait a minute according to fox, cnn, msnbc and others Hillary is a land slide no matter who she faces.

    Do you mean to tell me this formula which is the most accurate model out there says fox, cnn, msnbc and the others are lying to the people again?

    I already sent my mail in ballot in Florida for Trump Rubio is toast and so is Hillary.

  610. Nixon was a solid president who was paranoid and did some spying on enemies. Obama and Hitlery got and had people killed, lied compulsively and used the IRS to target opponents. Only reason Nixon springs to your weak mind as the worst of those three is our complicit media.

  611. Im curious if the “computer model” also takes in to account that legally (in all states if i remember correctly) Electors can vote for whoever they want (when push comes to shove)? I cannot for one moment believe that a “non-establishment” candidate will EVER be President of the United States.

    My firm belief is that one way or another Trump will be eliminated by “the power behind the power” before the election is held (especially if it is a matchup between him and Hillary). If he makes it to the General Election, you will see enough defecting electors to throw it to Hillary.

    All bets are off though if its Trump versus Sanders. However I dont believe THAT will ever happen. The “Peoples Democratic Party” would never allow it as seen by the shenanigans already going on behind the scenes.

  612. The only lives they make better are for themselves and their families as they rob the nation blind at our expense.

  613. Warning to those who would rather stay home than vote for Trump. You did it to Romney in 2012…see bow wonderful that decision has been. Lowest voter participation percentage for Tea party and evangelicals on record.
    Go for a Republican win, PERIOD! It will improve…blocking a liberal SCOTUS that will bypass congress and drag us towards a Socialist Democracy.

  614. The simple fact is that there is no heart or life in the soul of the Dem party. Obama has proven to be a total abject failure and any promises from Dem candidates today about making life better just ring hollow.

  615. In reference to the “schlonging” China gives us on trade…What goes around comes around. A small change would reap billions due to the sheer volume of trade.

  616. Trump will win, these polls showing Hillary winning the election, 1 are phony and 2 are old, most of the newer ones show it very close, some even show Trump leading. In 1980 the media lied and were claiming Cater was going to win, trying to influence the election, but about a week out they claimed the race was narrowing because they saw Reagan was going to crush him and didn’t want to be caught so far off with their phony predictions and day before the election they claimed it was a statistical tie and remarkably on election day everyone broke for Reagan. Reagan won 44 States, that wasn’t a last minute phenomenon, it was the media lying trying to change people’s votes, it didn’t work. It won’t work this time for the Democrats and their media puppets either. That is why the media is pushing Rubio, just like they did, Romney and McCain because they know neither can win. That is why the Democrats keep saying Rubio is the guy they are afraid of because they know how stupid the Republican establishment is and that they will believe the Democrats just like they did in 2008 and 2012.

  617. Honestly, we NEED a fire breathing SOB, with a heart, to jerk the country back towards the center right..then a holistic conservative like Cruz can finish the transformation to the country our founders envisioned. Go TRUMP!!!

  618. Lets face it America’s Gov. has been taken over by a bunch of crooked corrupt people, both side of the isle. The only way to shake up the established corrupt politician is get somebody like Trump in and rip them a new hole .

  619. The one and ONLY reason I voted for the RINO McCain was because he brought in Palin. That being said, Palin’s support for Trump was the last straw in my support of her.

  620. Hillary is also a lying corrupt incompetent traitor.
    I wonder if he factored those variables into his model.

  621. “Oh he’s a loose cannon.”
    “He’s just a cowboy.”
    “Everything with him is just an act.”
    “God forbid his finger is on the button.”

    All quotes about Reagan by the pundits at the time.

  622. Exactly, Illinois was “won” by Kennedy because of the Chicago machine stealing the election with the dead overwhelmingly voting for Kennedy and Texas going for Kennedy too, with Johnson’s assistance. That was the first of Two Democrat Coups, stealing the U.S. election.

  623. LBJ did the same on the border counties along the Rio Grande.

    “Jack our Jack….why?….If only….gone are the days….

  624. Not a fan of Donald Trump never really was. With that said, looking at America’s trajectory over the past 15 years it is simply frightening folks, it is not good at all. We where promised hope and change, unity, everyone getting along after new form of politics was ushered in by our newly elected non-partisan president – we know how that turned out. We have no choice but to give Donald Trump a 4 year shot, he is a true political clean slate not a faux clean slate like Obama. Hillary is status quo Wall Street big banks and big corporations that is a given.

  625. China: You a must not elect. Mr. Trump he a want make fair trade with a China , we a don’t do a fair trade. He a want to make America great again , we don’t support great America ,like a rest of communist.

  626. Didn’t work for 1960 because Daley stole it for Kennedy in Cook County..true, look it up.

  627. It is imperative you vote for Trump even if you don’t like him.

    Why? Because if the Dems or RINOs (including Rubio, Kasich) get in America will continue to be converted into a third world country. Crazy? Well ask the people who live in Dearborn who have to suffer the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. And who have seen their property prices collapse since only Muslims will buy their houses. Or ask the Californians where English is becoming a minority language. And now Ford is building a huge factory in Mexico. US jobs gone for good.

    Also let’s not forget Disney bringing in workers from India and forcing the employees to train their replacements.

    The time to save America is urgent. Europe is probably lost. Vote Trump to save your country. It is the last best only chance we have.

  628. We know the truth — Trump will win — BUT WE STILL HAVE TO VOTE. Do not get complacent! He must get the nomination first.

  629. Well, from his lips and to the Lord’s ears. Meanwhile, do not be lulled to sleep but remain watchful. 61% chance of winning is better than 39%, but 39 is still substantial.

  630. This is why the media and establishment don’t want Trump to be the nominee. A Trump failure to get the nomination would guarantee a Hillary general election win.

  631. So explain Trumps huge win in SC with a record number of evangelicals turning out and he won every county. That was a state made for a nominee of the evangelicals like Cruz to win…and look who took it…Trump, and by YUGE margins every county. FYI, as an evangelical myself…many evangelicals love Trump. We despise a liar, thus won’t be voting for Hillary. If Trump is not the Republican nominee we will write him in or follow him 3rd party. Best rethink your theory on Trumps strength with evangelicals.

  632. Trump will win and America and Americans will continue losing and much more than before. Americans will be full of hope and change, but will begin to realize by the end of the first year that they have been sold a lemon by one of the most successful salesman in America. The “I told you so’s will quickly follow.”

  633. I am an independent, and the only thing that will make me vote for Hillary is Trump running against her.

  634. Independents are not turned off by Trump …might be just you …but
    you don’t represent the rest of us independents…..

  635. Good for Trump…..He Will be the Next President….Great for the Country….
    Great for All Americans…also…
    It is about time we get someone who knows how to Get the Job Done !!!
    ~~~~Trump 2016 and Beyond ~~~~

  636. I’m not misunderstanding it — I don’t understand it at all. I don’t find fault with any of the individual statement you’ve made, but also don’t see them supported by or incorporated into data — either his or yours.

    All of that qualitative segment prediction you did isn’t even mentioned in the article. In fact, it explicitly states, “This forecast was made using the electoral cycle model, which studies a pattern of voting in the presidential election that makes it less likely for an incumbent party to hold the presidency after two terms in office. The model does not assume who would be the party nominees or the conditions of the country at the time.” So it would seem to dismiss, rather than incorporate or reinforce, what you said, no?

    Again, I’d simply like to see the numbers behind the methodology, and an explanation of the applied technique. Otherwise, on its face, it doesn’t seem like a tremendously compelling predictive model.

  637. States’ partisanship is hardening.

    Because of state winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes, analysts concluded months ago that only the 2016 party winner of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire (with 86 electoral votes among them) is not a foregone conclusion.

    10 states were considered competitive in the 2012 election. More than 99% of presidential campaign attention (ad spending and visits) was invested in them. Two-thirds (176 of 253) of the general-election campaign events, and a similar fraction of campaign expenditures, were in just four states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa).

    So, if the National Popular Vote bill is not in effect, less than a handful of states will continue to dominate and determine the presidential general election.

    Over the last few decades, presidential election outcomes within the majority of states have become more and more predictable.

    From 1992- 2012
    13 states (with 102 electoral votes) voted Republican every time
    19 states (with 242) voted Democratic every time

    If this 20 year pattern continues, and the National Popular Vote bill does not go into effect,
    Democrats only would need a mere 28 electoral votes from other states.
    If Republicans lose Florida (29), they would lose.

    In the 2015 elections, “in blue states and cities, the [Democratic] party held or gained ground. As the parties head into a new presidential year, the country’s partisan divide has deepened. Republicans walked away from Tuesday with the big wins. Democrats walked away with fresh confidence that their map can win a third presidential election in a row.” . . . “the [Democratic] status quo continued. The blueness is seeping out from the cities as folks move and settle families. It’s a long-term shift.” – Washington Post, Off-year elections reveal a 2016 map with sharper borders, Nov. 4, 2015

    Some states have not been competitive for more than a half-century and most states now have a degree of partisan imbalance that makes them highly unlikely to be in a swing state position.
    • 41 States Won by Same Party, 2000-2012
    • 32 States Won by Same Party, 1992-2012
    • 13 States Won Only by Republican Party, 1980-2012
    • 19 States Won Only by Democratic Party, 1992-2012
    • 7 Democratic States Not Swing State since 1988
    • 16 GOP States Not Swing State since 1988

  638. So, he can make that claim without knowing who Trump would pick as his running mate for Vice President? I think most voters 8 years ago thought John McCain had a good shot at winning until he chose Sarah Palin.

  639. You’re misunderstanding the method behind the formula. Primary success signifies campaign strength. Despite not cracking around 35% of the Republican vote nationally, Trump has remained at the top of the pack for the vast majority of his campaign. Also, not everyone who has another Republican as their first choice has ruled out Trump. After dropping out, Jeb Bush’s votes were expected to go to another establishment candidate in Nevada, when Trump came out with more votes than expected.

    Many evangelical voters dislike Trump. But given the choice between him and Hillary most will either bite the bullet for Trump or just stay home. Meanwhile, Sanders has convinced a massive chunk of Democrats that Hillary is a corporatist who isn’t progressive. More liberal Democrats might be passive if Hillary gets nominated. Meanwhile, people who pay less attention to politics vying for the first woman president and people who think Sanders is too old for the job might be lukewarm for Sanders.

  640. Is there a link or place to compare Norpoth’s past predictions to the actual Election results?

  641. “The primary model predicts a Trump victory with such certainty due to Trump’s relatively high success in the Republican primaries, Norpoth said. Clinton, in comparison, is in an essential tie with Sanders in the Democratic primaries. As a result, Sanders would also lose to Trump in a similar landslide if Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, Norpoth said.”

    That doesn’t make any sense. Trump is clearly trouncing his opponents in the Republican primary, but his numbers haven’t cracked out of the 30’s. His “yuge” support base is a third of a fraction (primary voters) of a third (Republicans) of the total electorate. Go onto any conservative blog right now, and you’ll see conservatives debating whether to even show up at the polls if Trump is the nominee. He’s as uninspiring to many Republicans as he is motivating to Democrats.

    Meanwhile, this study doesn’t seem to factor in independents at all, many of whom, polls show, are completely turned off by Trump.

    That’s not to say Trump should be written off. He’s proven to be a formidable opponent, deft at manipulating the news cycle to his advantage. But I would love if this article actually linked to numbers, assumptions, and methodologies. Otherwise it’s just silly.

  642. I’ve been predicting a 58% popular vote win for Trump for 6 months. I’m a Tea Party leader since late 2008. The electricity is on the street.

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