With an eye on the patterns of history, one historian has said former President Donald Trump is likely to win the 2024 election.

Trump is “the next president,” historian Niall Ferguson wrote in a column in the Spectator.

Ferguson said expectations that legal woes will sink Trump and faith in President Joe Biden to do again what was done in 2020 “betray a failure of imagination.”

He said that the “campaign of lawfare against Trump has already started to backfire.”

Ferguson said that “the perception that Democratic operatives are using the legal system for political ends will likely help him win votes.”

Ferguson explained his logic.

“It may seem paradoxical that the Democrats are harassing Trump in the courts if they want to run against him. But it makes sense: The prospect of him performing the perp walk attracts media coverage, and media coverage is the free publicity on which Trump has always thrived. Every column inch or minute of airtime his legal battles earn him is an inch or a minute less for his Republican rivals for the nomination,” he said.

Ferguson noted that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could be a significant rival in a two-person contest for the GOP nomination, but with many candidates running, Trump’s odds improve.

Ferguson wrote that the Republican pattern has been that frontrunners who grab the early lead come out on top, while for Democrats it is far less true.

“In short, unless the Republican party has somehow morphed into the Democratic party, the GOP nomination is now Trump’s to lose,” he wrote.

As to the question of their respective popularity, Ferguson wrote, “Face it: Biden isn’t that popular as world leaders go.”

And then there is the economy, which Ferguson paints as stumbling toward a recession, leading him to write that “no president since Calvin Coolidge a century ago has secured re-election if a recession has occurred in the two years before the nation votes. It does not need to be as severe as the Great Depression that destroyed Herbert Hoover’s presidency. A plain vanilla recession will suffice.”

“If you think the economy isn’t going to be the issue in the 2024 election, I’ve got a Whip Inflation Now badge to sell you,” he wrote.

After CNN town hall, 'it's over': Trump has locked up the 2024 nomination, says Dan Bongino. https://t.co/9i0lzXITg5

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) May 12, 2023

Ferguson noted that there is time between now and the election for the world to change, but said that “the lesson of history is clear -- the Republican frontrunner usually wins the nomination, and a post-recession incumbent usually loses the presidential election.”

His conclusion: “A second Trump act is not just possible. It’s fast becoming my base case."

A recent Washington Post/ABC poll that showed Trump beating Biden should be a wake-up call for delusional Democrats, one expert noted, according to The New York Times.

“Democrats are in denial if they think Biden cannot lose to Trump in 2024,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican consultant.

“Trump can most certainly win. Joe Biden is asking the country to elect a candidate who will be 82 years old, who has clearly lost a step, running with a vice president whom almost no one in either party thinks is ready for prime time."

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.