USA Presidential Election Prediction

 ©2016 J. Lee Lehman, PhD

 Even as a young student of astrology, I realized there were certain methodological problems with predicting the outcome of presidential elections. The first and most obvious was our our personal passions as homo publicus can preclude objectivity. The second was that predicting a contest winner between two rivals is simply not something done commonly in astrology as practiced in the 20th, now 21st, century. As a graduate student also studying statistics, I was interested in whether there were objective methods which could be used. I didn't discover any until much later, but when I did, the ultimate source was the rules of warfare from Guido Bonatti.

This year, I was asked to participate in ISAR's presidential prediction panel at their symposium in Costa Mesa, CA on 17 October 2016 Each panelist was given 4 minutes to describe methods and make a prediction. That's not much detail! I have attached a file with what would have been the full presentation. What I propose to do with the rest of this blog is to make some comments, so please download the pdf first, so you can understand my comments.

http://leelehman.com/Conferences/2016/2016PresidentialElection.pdf

The first section, beginning on page 4, concerns certain correlations I have seen in candidate's nativities, based originally on sets of elections where we have B data or better for both candidates. Obviously, 2016 was a throw-back to a situation where that isn't true, so methods need to be considered where the time of birth is not necessary. Honestly, there's not enough to make more than some very general observations.

The meat starts after slide 9, because the mundane data doesn't require nativities, being based only on sides defined by which party occupies the White House, and which party is challenging.

Going back to the second presidential election (because in the first, there was no "holder"), I tried a whole series of mundane charts to see whether they were predictive of the outcome. Some were; some weren't. All except the Mars-Jupiter, Mars-Saturn, or prior syzygy type were scored in an Access database design which rigidly assigns points for certain configurations. All these models are completely objective, which was the goal.

The prior Mars-Jupiter and Mars-Saturn conjunctions are actually graded quite simply. There is a Medieval idea that a conjunction or aspect can be analyzed differently according to which of the two bodies has the greater degree of essential dignity. Both of these two conjunctions were used historically for mundane predictions for time periods greater than a single year, and less than the twenty years of the Jupiter-Saturn, or even the quarter cycle of seven years for the Jupiter-Saturn. Thus, for a four year presidential cycle they are ideal, because each subsequent election cycle must fall under a new conjunction, and thus potentially have a different outcome. Mars is a nocturnal planet; Jupiter and Saturn are diurnal planets. Thus, conjunctions in the masculine signs will favor Jupiter or Saturn (unless in Aries, where Mars rules), and conjunctions in feminine signs will favor Mars (except Cancer, where Jupiter is exalted). The greater dignity of domicile or exaltation generally out classes Triplicity.

The only other outlier method is the simple determination of whether the election is immediately preceded by a New or Full Moon, with the somewhat surprising result that a Full Moon doesn't predict anything, but a New Moon before, as in 2016, predicts a victory of the holder.

So the prediction is Clinton - and that point is this model would have predicted the Democrats anythime it was run: it was not dependent on Hillary winning the primaries.

The other not I would make is that I have not the model as consistently for the House and Senate.Since all do not necessarily run in sync, there has to be at least one other factor involved, which I haven't found yet. Happy hunting!