Predicting the Time Person of the Year is pretty easy during a presidential election

Who would you pick, if you could choose the Person of the Year?

Time magazine is famous for designating a Person of the Year honor for almost a century, starting as Man of the Year in the 1920s, with Charles Lindbergh being the first winner, for flying solo across the Atlantic.

I’ve found that occasionally, the honor from Time has been almost too easy to predict, especially in election years.

If it’s a leap year, then the U.S. has a presidential election, and the winner of that race almost always gets the year-end cover of Time, with Donald Trump as the 2024 choice.

Trump got the title one other time, in 2016 — the first year he was elected. And in seven out of the last eight elections, the presidential winner gets Person of the Year. In 1996, Time chose AIDS researcher David Ho over re-elected president Bill Clinton, and that was a good pick.

Certainly, what happened to Trump this year was news-making. He’s only the second president to win a second term after being voted out of office, and he was wounded by a shooter.

Time had 10 candidates on the list this year, including Kamala Harris, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. And last year, their winner was Taylor Swift, also kind of an obvious choice.

Hey, there’s no national election next year, will Trump repeat? The folks at Time have 12 months to surprise us.