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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Using an analysis that has successfully predicted outcomes for most toss-up states in three presidential elections, two King&#8217;s College numbers crunchers announced Monday the Electoral College vote winner will be: Clinton-ishy.</p><p>&#8220;Anything can happen,&#8221; Math Department Chair Dan Ghezzi conceded. &#8220;But I&#8217;m highly confident in our methodology here. It has worked three times in a row.&#8221;</p><p>Technically, their system didn&#8217;t give the win to Democrat Hillary Clinton, but it was so close that two states clearly leaning toward her in the polls would take her over the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.</p><p>The methodology is centered on polling of likely voters as reported by realclearpolitics.com. Ghezzi and Joe Evan, a former mathematics faculty member and dean of faculty, begin by assuming realclearpolitics has accurately determined the number of states that will solidly go for either candidate.</p><p>As of noon Sunday, that was 216 electoral votes for Clinton and 164 for Republican Donald Trump, with another 158 votes in 13 states considered a tossup.</p><p>Ghezzi and Evan look at poll results since the end of the third debate Oct. 19 in each of the toss up states. They apply two measures to call those states, looking first at the number of polls each candidate won, and second at a &#8220;mega-analysis&#8221; of all the polls as though they were one big poll in each state.</p><p>Accuracy of the first method hinges on the number of polls. If there are fewer than eight, the method isn&#8217;t applied. If there are eight or more polls, a candidate has to have won a specific number of the total to be considered the likely winner of the state.</p><p>The more polls there are, the more a candidate can lose and still be predicted to take the state: If there are eight to 11 polls, a candidate must win all of them; 12 to 14, they can lose one poll; 15-17, they can lose two; and 18-20, they can lose three.</p><p>If there are fewer than eight polls, or if neither candidate won enough to win the state, they apply the mega-analysis. The margin of error depends on the number of people polled: the more people, the smaller the margin of error.</p><p>A candidate must win the mega poll even with the margin of error applied. For example, analyzing 13 polls in North Carolina with a 1.2 percent margin of error showed Clinton getting a minimum of 43.1 percent of the vote and Trump getting a maximum of 43.6 percent. Because those two numbers overlap, Ghezzi and Evan declared North Carolina a toss up even after applying their two methods.</p><p>The bottom line: Their system gives Maine, New Mexico, Michigan and Pennsylvania to Clinton, adding 43 electoral votes to give her a total of 259. It gives Trump Georgia and Ohio, adding 34 votes that make his total 198.</p><p>That leaves New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida still a toss up (one electoral vote in Maine, awarded by congressional district rather than statewide, is also a toss up).</p><p>While the two men would not make official predictions, they noted Colorado and New Hampshire have been leaning heavily toward Clinton and, if she wins those 13 electoral votes, it ups her total to 272, topping the 270 threshold.</p><p>They also noted Iowa and Arizona have leaned toward Trump, which would give him 17 more votes for a total of 181.</p><p>That would leave three states as true toss-ups even after their system is applied and after giving four iffy states to the two candidates: Nevada, North Carolina and Florida, with a combined 50 electoral votes.</p><p>Of those, more than half &#8212; 29 &#8212; go to the winner in Florida, a state where, despite a lot of polls, no clear winner could be determined by either method. &#8220;There&#8217;s no hope there,&#8221; Ghezzi quipped.</p><p>Evan conceded their methodology is only as good as the polls upon which they rely, and that a &#8220;catastrophic failure&#8221; in the polls would nullify their results. But both he and Ghezzi noted applying their system to the polls has proven accurate in the past, and said there is no reason &#8212; so far &#8212; to believe the polls are wrong this time.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Joe Evan points out the swing states from the 2008 election. Evan and Daniel Ghezzi, both of the King&#8217;s College math faculty, have applied a system of poll analysis to each of the last three elections to predict which candidates would win which swing state, and on Friday they applied the system to this year&#8217;s race. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_TTL110816predict1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Joe Evan points out the swing states from the 2008 election. Evan and Daniel Ghezzi, both of the King&#8217;s College math faculty, have applied a system of poll analysis to each of the last three elections to predict which candidates would win which swing state, and on Friday they applied the system to this year&#8217;s race. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_TTL110816predict2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Joe Evan  11/7/2016 Aimee Dilger|Times Leader</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_TTL110816predict2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Joe Evan  11/7/2016 Aimee Dilger|Times Leader</caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_TTL110816predict3.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Dan Ghezzi 11/7/2016 Aimee Dilger|Times Leader</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_TTL110816predict3.jpg</photo2><caption2>Dan Ghezzi 11/7/2016 Aimee Dilger|Times Leader</caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

King’s profs call the presidential race a day early: It’s Clinton-ish, they say