Republican Donald Trump should win the presidency by a slim margin according to a model that has accurately predicted the popular vote since 1988.

Using several standards to make his prediction, Alan Abramowitz's "Time for Change" model done for the University of Virginia's Center for Politics "Crystal Ball" shows Trump winning 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent for Hillary Clinton.

He added that the model shows a 66 percent chance of a Trump victory.

"Based on a predicted vote share of 48.6 percent for the incumbent party, these results indicate that Trump should be a clear but not overwhelming favorite to defeat Clinton: There should be about a 66 percent chance of a Republican victory," Abramowitz added.

However, in an unusual move, Abramowitz is throwing his own model under the bus and suggesting that Clinton will win because Trump is so different from past presidential candidates and has such high unfavorability ratings that his election forecast basics can't be trusted.

"Based on the results of other recent presidential elections, however, as well as Trump's extraordinary unpopularity, it appears very likely that the Republican vote share will fall several points below what would be expected if the GOP had nominated a mainstream candidate and that candidate had run a reasonably competent campaign. Therefore, despite the prediction of the Time for Change model, Clinton should probably be considered a strong favorite to win the 2016 presidential election as suggested by the results of recent national and state polls," he concluded on the Crystal Ball site.



That is in line with Crystal Ball founder Larry Sabato's prediction also on the site.

See the two election forecasts here.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com