Just days before the first presidential debate, a new national poll shows it’s a close presidential race.
Nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are running neck and neck at 46.2% and 43.2% respectively, according to a RealClearPolitics average of national polls. But polls are often inaccurate election forecasters. Remember when several predicted John Kerry would win in 2004? However, there is one group that’s known to have an accurate pulse on election outcomes—and that’s gamblers.
As of today, the Las Vegas odds makers are betting markets drastically favor Clinton to win. They give Democratic nominee a 72%-odds of becoming the next president, according to Bovada Sportsbook, with Trump at 28% odds to win.
But Clinton fans shouldn’t pop the champagne just yet. Distinguished historian Allan Lichtman of American University in Washington, D.C., who literally wrote the book on Predicting the Next President, has correctly predicted the winner of every U.S. presidential election since 1984. And in a recent Washington Post interview, Lichtman said historical patterns currently favor Trump to win in November (and again, he’s never been wrong).
The historian’s calculations examine 13 key indicators every Presidential election cycle with a true/false evaluation. When six or more keys are false, the incumbent political party has always lost the White House.
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“The keys are phrased to reflect the basic theory that elections are primarily judgments on the performance of the party holding the White House,” Lichtman told the Post. “Based on the 13 keys, it would predict a Donald Trump victory.”
Still, the key variable right now is whether Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, gets at least 6% of the vote. If this happens, according to Lichtman, the incumbent party will lose. So far, polls show Johnson has 12% of the projected vote.