Related Link Assuming History's a Good Guide, Trump's Going to Win By Allan Lichtman

The story of the 2016 election is one of a stunning defeat, not just for Hillary Clinton, but also for the pollsters, pundits and data-driven journalists who overwhelmingly predicted her victory.

But at least one scholar, Allan J. Lichtman, saw both coming. Dr. Lichtman, a historian at American University in Washington, is the co-creator of a historically based model that has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in the last eight presidential contests — and, back in September, predicted the supposedly unthinkable election of Donald J. Trump.

The model, developed in 1981 with the Russian mathematical geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok and elaborated in the book “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2016,” is simple on the surface. It disregards complex formulas in favor of 13 true-or-false statements measuring the underlying force that Dr. Lichtman, based on analyses of elections from 1860 through 1980, believes really matters: the strength of the incumbent party.