Maybe we should start preparing ourselves for this now.

Professor Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington DC, has accurately predicted every US presidential election since Ronald Reagan's landslide win in 1984. And Lichtman has just made his call for November's fateful face-off: he says Donald Trump is going to win. Lichtman's prediction system is known as 'The Keys to the White House', and, as the Washington Post explains, it's not based on polling but rather a series of "true/false statements" that determines the predicted winner. [caption id="attachment_312706" align="aligncenter" width="3057"]

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

  [/caption] He refers to these statements as 'keys' and they cover topics and areas such as the economy, social unrest, party mandate, and foreign/military failures and successes. The professor explains it himself like this:

"The keys are 13 true/false questions, where an answer of "true" always favours the re-election of the party holding the White House, in this case the Democrats. And the keys are phrased to reflect the basic theory that elections are primarily judgments on the performance of the party holding the White House. And if six or more of the 13 keys are false — that is, they go against the party in power — they lose. If fewer than six are false, the party in power gets four more years."

He then adds:

"Based on the 13 keys, it would predict a Donald Trump victory. Remember, six keys and you're out, and right now the Democrats are out — for sure — five keys."

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/778553790568001540 Lichtman thinks the crucial sixth key will be the presence of third party candidates like the Libertarian Gary Johnson on the ballot, which could eat away at Hillary Clinton's core vote. But before you start making plans to move into an underground shelter for the next four years, Lichtman offers a glimmer of hope.

"We have never before seen a candidate like Donald Trump...So very, very narrowly, the keys point to a Trump victory. But I would say, more to the point, they point to a generic Republican victory, because I believe that given the unprecedented nature of the Trump candidacy and Trump himself, he could defy all odds and lose even though the verdict of history is in his favour. So this would also suggest, you know, the possibility this election could go either way. Nobody should be complacent, no matter who you're for, you gotta get out and vote."