The difference was that the Presidency WAS stolen from Nixon.
Looks like Morris is trying to keep his prediction accuracy rate down again.
Morris occasionally has some astute observations (donning flame-retardant suit!), but his problem is that he's always writing to a deadline. Maybe if he just wrote when he was truly inspired, rather than just grind out his columns and collect a paycheck, he'd up his average - some.
But like the weather forecasters, there's relatively little downside for political analysts if they are wrong in their predictions . . .