Helmut Norpoth


Helmut Norpoth is an American political scientist and professor of political science at Stony Brook University. Norpoth is best known for developing the Primary Model, which has correctly predicted five of the six previous US elections. The Primary Model correctly predicted Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election.

Education and career

Norpoth received his undergraduate degree from the Free University of Berlin in Germany in 1966. He then attended the University of Michigan, where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in 1967 and 1974, respectively. Before joining Stony Brook University as an assistant professor in 1979, he taught at the University of Cologne and the University of Texas. In 1980, he was promoted to associate professor at Stony Brook University, and became a tenured full professor there in 1985.

Research

Norpoth's research focuses on multiple subjects in political science, including public opinion and electoral behavior, and predicting the results of elections in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany.

"Primary Model" for US presidential elections

Norpoth developed the Primary Model, a statistical model of United States presidential elections based on data going back to 1912. According to his website Primary Model, he has used the model to correctly predict five of six presidential elections from 1996 to 2016, including Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election. This model is based on two factors: whether the party that has been in power for a long time seems to be about to lose it, and whether a given candidate did better in the primaries than his or her opponent. In February 2015, he projected that Republicans had a 65 percent chance of winning the general election the following year. In 2016, this model gained significant media attention because it predicted that Donald Trump would win the general election. In response to critics who cited polls in which Clinton led Trump by a significant margin, Norpoth said that these polls were not taking into account who will actually vote in November, writing, "…nearly all of us say, oh yes, I'll vote, and then many will not follow through." In 2020, Norpoth stated that his model gave Trump a 91% chance at winning re-election.