Professor Helmut Norpoth of Stony Brook University in New York has a remarkable track record of correctly predicting presidential election outcomes. This year, he predicts Republican Donald Trump the winner. His website, PrimaryModel.com, boasts an 87 to 99 percent certainty of this outcome. But, one might wonder if Professor Norpoth's winning model takes into account a very important factor: This ain't your momma's presidential election.
"The model cannot account for historically bad candidates. That's not what it does. It assumes you're nominating an average Republican, and that's not what we did here," Co-host Stu Burguiere said Monday on The Glenn Beck Program.
Norpoth's model takes into account primary election results and how the candidates performed. He's been tracking primaries for about 100 years, since 1912.
Read below or watch the clip for answers to these rigged questions:
• What two state primaries did Norpoth use for his prediction?
• Is Norpoth alone among academics predicting a Trump win?
• Who do prediction markets say will win and by what margin?
• Are Pat and Stu more excited about Halloween or the election being over?
• Has Trump led or trailed in the last 13 polls?
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:
PAT: And he should be thinking about this in a positive way. Professor Helmut Norpoth, who has predicted -- now, you probably don't know the name, necessarily. It might not jump out at you exactly.
JEFFY: Professor Helmut Norpoth?
PAT: Helmut Norpoth.
STU: Hang on. Helmut Norpoth
PAT: The -- the Helmut Norpoth, who has predicted, by the way, the last five elections correctly --
JEFFY: You don't have to tell us.
PAT: I know. I didn't mean to talk down to you. I apologize.
STU: Last five. So the two Bushes president two Obamas -- and going.
PAT: And then the Clinton.
STU: The Clinton. So there's really only two close calls there: Bush/Gore, which, by the way, Gore, of course, won the popular vote. Obviously, the electoral vote is the one that counts --
PAT: Okay. Maybe it's the last 50. Last 50 elections.
STU: Last 50 elections? How old is this guy?
PAT: He says there's an 87 percent chance of a Trump win.
STU: Interesting.
PAT: 87 percent chance that Trump wins this thing. He was about the only one. He was on TV over the weekend. And here's what he had to say.
VOICE: Despite what recent polls say and what everyone in Washington and on television is saying, this RealClearPolitics poll -- clean this one -- this man is sticked by his prediction of a Trump victory. Here to explain is Stony Brook University Professor Helmut Norpoth.
PAT: Now, see, you're mocking him. He's from Stony Brook. Now mock him.
STU: No one is mocking Helmut.
PAT: You can't.
STU: This is -- if it was some imposter, that would be one thing. But this is the Helmut Norpoth.
PAT: Okay. Right. This is the Helmut Norpoth from Stony Brook University.
VOICE: Professor, it's great to see you.
VOICE: Thank you very much for having me.
VOICE: So you are almost alone among academics predicting a Trump win. Not because you're coming out for Trump, but because you have a model that you believe leads to the conclusion he's going to win. Tell us about this model. How have you arrived to this conclusion?
VOICE: Well, there are two things. Okay? The model is called the primary model. So I take into account primary elections, real elections. How the candidates are performing. And I can track primaries for about 100 years, since 1912. So it's quite a set of elections.
VOICE: Yes.
VOICE: And it usually turns out that the candidate who does better in his party's primaries or her party's primary beats the other guy who does less well. And so in this election, the primaries that I'm relying on is only New Hampshire and North Carolina.
VOICE: Yes.
VOICE: Donald Trump came out on top. Better than Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race.
VOICE: That seems like a fair measure.
And what's the other one?
PAT: It seems like --
STU: Wait. Hold on.
JEFFY: Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Okay?
STU: Wait. It seems like a fair measure to figure out the election results based on the two states -- including the one that he lost. We'll just pick the two states he won? What?
PAT: I knew you might take exception to that.
JEFFY: I mean, we're talking about professor --
PAT: We're talking about Helmut --
STU: Wait. So we're going -- you know, we obviously don't count the first primary election. But the second and third? I mean, he did really well. Well, yes, he did do very well in the second and third.
PAT: He won them.
STU: And then he went on to lose other states.
PAT: Right.
STU: You know, I mean, this was a competitive primary. This was a primary that lasted much longer. I mean, every candidate in recent memory, going back -- I can't even remember how long.
PAT: I know. I thought that was a bizarre --
JEFFY: Well, the professor went back 100 years.
STU: No, he didn't. You know, in a Republican primary, when was the last time we had one that went on that long? I mean, you're going way back, probably Reagan, right?
PAT: Probably.
STU: I mean, you're back to Reagan, since that has happened. I mean, this was not a blowout primary.
PAT: I think it went all the way to the convention. So it must have been that, yeah.
PAT: But I thought that was a pretty specious --
STU: That's a weird standard.
PAT: -- standard to base your findings on. Not the first one, where he lost. We're not looking at that. But the next two he did really well and he did even better than Clinton did in those two states. So?
STU: Remember too --
PAT: And?
STU: -- Clinton's opponent was in a neighboring state of New Hampshire.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: So, you know, Sanders did well there in comparison. That is a -- that's an interesting one.
PAT: It is interesting. But there's more.
VOICE: The tendency after let's say two terms of a White House party being in office, there is a change.
PAT: This, I think, is legitimate. Once a party has had two terms in office, people are usually sick of them, unless they've been really good and there's demonstrable difference that's positive change in the country.
STU: Reagan is the last one for that too.
PAT: Yeah, and there certainly hasn't been that.
VOICE: And I can actually track that for a longer period of time, for almost 200 years. And that also gives a prediction that Republicans are favored this year.
VOICE: So a lot of us in the TV business make predictions. And we say it. And we say we believe it. But do we really believe it? Do we believe it enough to bet on it? Do you believe your prediction enough to put your money in a legal way in a betting market behind your prediction?
VOICE: Yes, I have. I've gone all-in in the Iowa market, which is sort of the oldest prediction market where it's legal to do that. And I bought shares of the Republican candidate, way, way long time ago. And I'm sticking with it.
PAT: All right. Turn you around?
STU: I mean, look, amazing stories are built on people who band against the odds, right?
PAT: Yeah.
STU: We always forget these people when they lose. This guy does not get a follow-up interview about how his election was wrong if Donald Trump loses, right? This is it.
PAT: Yes, yes.
STU: But, I mean, if you want to look at the prediction markets, which I think is interesting -- I mean, the point being made there is, do you believe it? You put your money where your mouth is. Currently, prediction markets say Hillary Clinton is going to win with a 90 percent certainty. It's 90 to ten.
PAT: That's amazing.
STU: And that's prediction markets.
PAT: Ten.
STU: And I mean this honestly, if you are sitting there at home, and you're like, "You know what, these online polls have convinced me that Donald Trump is going to win," you can get five to one on your money right now. Five to one!
PAT: And that's not a bad bet, really. I mean, would it shock you to wake up on November 9th and realize that Donald Trump is the next president? It wouldn't blow me away. I would be a little surprised, but, you know, we've been surprised by him so many times.
STU: Yeah.
JEFFY: That's for sure.
PAT: It wouldn't be mind-blowing. That's for sure.
STU: The one thing that would be interesting --
PAT: It's more than a 90 to ten chance, I think.
STU: I think you're right. But that's not where the money is, for what that's worth.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: I think -- you're right, I think he has a better chance than 10 percent. But, you know, we sat here and looked at this thing. And we keep saying, "Oh, he's surprised us so many times." He's surprised us in the primary process, absolutely. I mean, I outwardly have said that I was completely wrong on predicting that. But the reason I was wrong was because I wasn't listening to the scientific polls. I was giving you answers on why the scientific polls wouldn't give up, as they haven't held up for previous candidates like Herman Cain. And name -- we went down that list 10 million times.
PAT: Uh-huh.
STU: You know, a lot of people flared up and were big for a while and then fell away. Donald Trump didn't do that.
PAT: We saw it over and over and over again.
STU: So he did that. But, again, Trump was leading in the polls the whole time.
PAT: Yeah, that's true.
STU: This is the opposite. For example, the last 13 polls, Trump has trailed in North Carolina. He -- he has no chance of winning the election if he can't win North Carolina. Now, he has to win North Carolina and like ten other states that would be considered swing states. Because North Carolina, to Mitt Romney was barely even a swing state. He's lost 13 straight polls in that state. At what point -- I mean, these are not swing states anymore.
PAT: The polls are rigged, Stu. You know that. The polls are rigged.
STU: Maybe. But when it gets to that point, where your argument -- you're in Helmut land.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: Well, I noticed that the elections where Trump did well, he did well. Okay. Well, that -- I mean, maybe that will work then. I don't know. Again, he might be right. You never know with this stuff. But I doubt --
PAT: Yeah.
(laughter)
STU: I'm going to be a little bit of a skeptic on that.
[break]
PAT: It's just, we are a week for Halloween, and we are -- we are two weeks and a day away from the election. Two weeks and one day. And then this thing is finally over.
STU: I can't wait. I mean, I cannot wait.
PAT: Then we can stop talking about it.
STU: By the way, can we just quickly before we move on address an oddity of Helmut's analysis in the last break?
PAT: Yes. Okay.
STU: His point was the first two primaries, Donald Trump won. Which, of course, if you exclude the first caucus. So if you get rid of Iowa for some reason and only count New Hampshire and South Carolina --
PAT: And really, the only reason to get rid of it is because it's a caucus and you're not counting those.
JEFFY: Correct.
STU: Or you're just looking for a justification for why it would be good for Donald Trump.
PAT: Yes.
JEFFY: The professor said primaries.
STU: Okay. Fine. So, okay. Primaries, there you go.
But his point was that he did better than Hillary did in those states.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: Here are the results from South Carolina's primary. Donald Trump did win. 33-23. Okay? Over Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is 22. Hillary Clinton won 74-26.
PAT: Wow.
STU: That's not -- my recollection of South Carolina was that Hillary Clinton did really well there. And the other state is the neighboring state -- he's from Vermont. So Bernie Sanders, of course, did better there.
PAT: Yeah. He won Vermont?
STU: I'm trying to --
PAT: Sanders? I mean, my guess would be yes.
STU: I think so.
PAT: Probably by a lot.
STU: New Hampshire you mean?
PAT: Yeah. New Hampshire.
JEFFY: Yeah.
PAT: Wow.
STU: But that's just a weird -- a weird point.
PAT: It's strange criteria.
STU: Yes. I would say that I'm just -- the easiest way to think about this -- and, yes, he did win that: 60-38. Trump won it 35-16.
JEFFY: I'm sure the professor took into account that Donald Trump had two people against him, where Hillary only had one. So Trump believes out on top on that.
STU: Yeah, okay. Thank you, Jeffy. It was --
PAT: I think that's deeper than the professor actually went.
(laughter)
That was good, Jeffy. That was some thinking.
JEFFY: Thank you.
STU: We should do a -- because he's betting on the markets, the prediction markets. We should do a prediction of whether Helmut gets an interview if Trump loses. If Trump loses, we just never hear Helmut's name again. Right?
JEFFY: No.
STU: Until he comes up with a new model that's been right for 250 years.
PAT: Yes.
JEFFY: Four years from now.
STU: Right. Four years from now, he'll be back in the media saying, "Look, I have a model that was correct."
PAT: There was another professor though. Maybe not a professor. Some sort of analyst, elections analyst who similarly -- but he has 14 different pieces of criteria that he uses. And he has predicted every election correctly since 1970 or something. I mean, it's -- it was dating back a long time. It was 12 elections in a row or something to that effect. And he's been right every time. And he also said Trump.
STU: Yeah, there was -- I think I know what point you're talking about.
PAT: It was a different guy than this one.
STU: Wow.
PAT: And his seemed to be much more substantial.
STU: Right. And a lot of these models -- every year, every election there's a model that comes out like this, that's been right for a million -- I mean, wasn't the Washington Redskins' win a week before the election --
PAT: Oh, yeah.
STU: There's always some weird, quirky thing --
PAT: And it was wrong.
STU: And, of course, they're eventually wrong. The last one that came out like this though was an economic model. And it really has a lot of basis. But in their write-up of this election was Trump should win. However, the model cannot account for historically bad candidates. That's not what it does. It assumes your average -- you're nominating an average Republican. And that's not what we did here.
PAT: He's not your average -- like him or don't, he's not your average Republican.
STU: Right.
PAT: I think we can all agree on that.
Featured Image: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Collier County Fairgrounds on October 23, 2016 in Naples, Florida. Early voting in Florida in the presidential election begins October 24. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)