For many months before election day, the polls suggested Joe Biden would win the White House by a significant margin. As I am writing this (3 November), the outcome is still uncertain and the world is on tenterhooks. But, even if he scrapes in 270 electors, Biden is going to be a lame President. (In any case, the Democrats have already lost the Senate and the majority at the Supreme Court.) From now on, American politics will be a dogfight, to put it as mildly as possible. But this isn’t my point in the post. My point is that the current outcome was not entirely difficult to predict. In fact, and given the comparative analysis of similar cases of countries with populist governments, it was a straight conclusion. Over the past year alone, I have written a ton in various places about the likelihood of a Trump win. Below is some of that early forecasting
In an article that was published in the Journal of Democracy in April 2019, I warned: “Once in office, populist parties invariably establish an illiberal order that displays four characteristics: reliance on charismatic leadership; incessant political polarization; the colonization of the state by loyalists, accompanied by the undermining of liberal institutions; and the systematic use of state-sponsored patronage. Populists in power tend to display strong resilience as long as the above characteristics are in place.”
In a newspaper op-ed for the Greek Kathimerini in April 2010 under the title “How Trump can be defeated” (in Greek), I pointed out that Biden was not able to undertake the task and that the Democrats’ strategy was badly flawed. At that time, I still kept some hope that the Democrats might nominate some some other candidate for US President in their yet-to-come National Democratic Convention (my thought was to Mayor Cuomo). It was with that wish that I concluded that piece, of course in vain.
In September 2020, I wrote a blog under the rather provocative title “Why is Trump likely to get re-elected? A populism expert’s view.” Here’s how that piece ended: “If the historical and comparative knowledge of modern liberal democracies that have experienced populist rule can serve as guidance, it is a Trump’s, not Biden’s, win that seems the most plausible result in the forthcoming US presidential election. But above all else please keep in mind two things. First, likelihood (i.e., what this post is about) is not the same as probability (for which, see the inexact science of electoral surveys). Second, and since no two cases in history are exactly the same, no history’s rule is binding.”
In a new newspaper op-ed for the Greek newspaper Kathimerini in late October 2010, I presented ten (10) factors that I believed to determine the electoral outcome. Each and all of those factors spoke in favor of Trump, not Biden. (I may try to rework that piece and somehow present it in English).
A couple of days before election day, I was interviewed by Spanish newspaper El Confidential. The interview was presented under the following title:
Oh, by the way, and since even dart-throwing chimpanzees can sometimes do well with predictions, I don’t throw darts. I am a political scientist and, among others, I have written the book below (which also includes a chapter on Trump’s political emergence and rule).
