Reuters built a computer model to predict which political party will win the presidency in next year’s election, and the results are in: a Republican will most likely be moving into the White House in 2017.
The data model takes into account a number of factors, most importantly the historic trend that “successor” candidates—those from the same party as the current president—are three times less likely to win, Reuters said. Given President Obama’s middling ratings, this means the Democrats are facing stiff odds in the upcoming White House battle.
The computer analysis, which uses historical averages, is probably a better standard to judge the upcoming election than polling data, at least for now. The polling data are off by an average of 8% from actual results this far from an election, although that margin of error gets smaller as election day nears. The average poll data error a week out is closer to 1.7%.
Read more about Reuters’ model and its results here.
Earlier this week at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women event, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett made this big claim about Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances in 2016:
