US expert who predicted outcome says models showed voters were unhappy with economy but did not seek sweeping transformation

Despite Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the presidential election, a political scientist who developed a model that correctly predicted his sweep of battleground states warns that voters have not necessarily given the president-elect a mandate to make radical changes.

In a paper released with little fanfare three weeks before the vote, Cornell University professor of government Peter Enns and his co-authors accurately forecast that Trump would win all seven swing states, based on a model they built that uses state-level presidential approval ratings and indicators of economic health.

Allan Lichtman’s forecast model was meant to be foolproof. He explains to David Smith what was different this time

Surely not even Nostradamus could get it right all of the time.

Allan Lichtman had correctly forecast the result of nine of the past 10 US presidential elections (and even the one he didn’t, in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore). His predictive model of “13 keys” to the White House was emulated around the world and seemed all but indestructible.