Donald Trump will win, claims man who correctly predicted almost every US presidential election

A professor who developed a model which successfully predicted all but one presidential election result for the past 100 years has claimed Donald Trump will win the election.

Professor Helmut Norpoth, of New York’s SUNY Stony Brook University, said the Republican candidate was likely to triumph in two weeks time because he was the strongest candidate in the primaries.

The political scientist developed a model which, when applied retroactively, accurately predicted every presidential election since 1912 – with the exception of the 2000 election, when it said Democratic candidate Al Gore would win.

Mr Gore won the popular vote, but following a disputde result in Florida, George W Bush was awarded more votes in the Electoral College and thus won the election.

The model suggests that the candidate who performs better in their parties primary race will go on to win the presidency.

Professor Norpoth told the New York Post: “I think he was the strongest candidate in the primaries and that he will prevail.

“The model predicted a Trump win in February and nothing has changed since then. Whatever happens in the real world doesn’t affect the model”.

However, the model does not take into account the changing political landscape.

The model does not consider how events influence the later stages of the race or the fact that the two parties are less and less representative of the country at large.

Increasingly important voter demographics – such as women and ethnic minorities – are peceived to be more likely to back the Democrats and white men more likely to back the Republicans.

The Trump campaign has been severely damaged by the revelation of a tape earlier this month, where the former reality star is heard bragging about sexually assaulting women and getting away with it because he is a “star”.

Further allegations by at least a dozen women that he sexually assaulted them – some of whom allege that the incident happened during his marriage to current wife Melania – have lead to many mainstream Republicans distancing themselves from him and a further drop in the polls.

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Similarly, although Mr Trump polls highly among white working class men who have perhaps lost out on globalisation, he performs poorly among college educated women and ethnic minorities.

Non-college educated women are also less enamoured of the Republican than their male counterparts, according to the Brookings Institute.

A state by state breakdown from Nate Silver, the pollster who correctly predicted how all 50 states voted in 2012, showed Mr Trump losing the key swing state of Florida – which has been so crucial to presidential fortunes in the past and has a large Hispanic population.

Even Ohio, another swing state with a large proportion of Mr Trump’s white working class base, looks like a toss up, with Mr Silver predicting Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning its 18 electoral votes at 54.3 per cent.

Overall, his 2016 election forecast predicts Ms Clinton has an 85 per cent chance of winning.

A poll which has predicted the result of the last three presidential elections, the Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP tracking poll, currently has Mr Trump at two points but this is within the margin of error.

A similar ABC News poll has Ms Clinton 12 points ahead and a Reuters/Ipsos electoral-vote analysis gives her a 96 per cent chance of winning.