2020 US Election – The Electoral Vote Mess!

One key difference between the US Presidential Elections and other countries is that the US President is not directly elected. Each state sends a number of “Electors” to actually vote for the President. In practice, this means that the winner of each state gets all of the electoral votes for that state. There are a few exceptions to this, such as Nebraska and Maine.

In the run up to any US Presidential Election, the national voter polls are not widely discussed in the media. Instead, the political news focuses on polls from a few key states, called swing states, to determine which candidate will win that state. In a typically non-pandemic year, the candidates would only focus on campaigning in these few states. The media would closely monitor them to see which way the election will go.

It is easy for an astrologer to look at the Election Day chart and say this person will win, but it is entirely different to say by how many electoral votes. This was a critical factor in the 2016 presidential election when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Donald Trump won the election, having won more key states and electoral votes.

My hypothesis on how to determine the electoral vote count for US elections is that each state has an early voting period when the election begins that is imperative in determining the winner for the election. Other countries don’t maintain such an extended election timeframe. In fact some US states allow voting up to a month before the actual election date. With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, more Americans than ever will be using the early voting period, and mail in ballots to determine the winner. It is very likely that this year, more than half the votes in the US will be casted before the actual Election Day.

How does the Election Day astrology chart decide the outcome if more that 60% of the voters have already voted before the actual election day? This is something astrologers need to understand in order for their predictions to have more accuracy. In order to do this, I am taking the approach of breaking the start of election day down by each individual swing state.

My first task was to determine which States are currently considered swing states. It serves no purpose to create a chart for California and find out that Donald Trump is favored there astrologically. It is nearly impossible for him to win California because there are so many Democrat voters there. He may do better than expected with favorable astrological conditions, but he most likely will not win.

The same outcome would happen with Joe Biden regarding South Dakota. A majority of the states don’t need analysis of the results. The swing states vary from cycle to cycle. Based on several lists I found online, I narrowed the number of states down to 14. This is way more manageable than 50. Below is what the electoral map looks like with swing states undecided.

Next I determined each state’s early voting laws, and as one can see in the Early Voting Dates & Times Table, there are considerable differences. Some states will begin voting in mid September! Then I found out when the local election offices are open in each state’s capital on the first day of early voting. This was harder than I thought. For three states, Maine, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, I couldn’t find this so I used the time of county government offices opening for each state capital.

Once I acquired the locations and times for the start of each early voting sessions, I was able to create the necessary charts and realized that I had to determine a method in which they could be analyzed. I decided to look at the condition of the ruler of the 10^th and 4^th House for the outcome. In mundane astrology the 10^th House is the President. Turning the chart, the 7^th House from the 10^th House is the 4th House, representing his opponent. To state more clearly, Donald Trump is the 10^th House and Joe Biden is the 4^th House.

Then I looked at both the Essential and Accidental Dignity of each of the rulers, The Essential Dignity is more widely understood by astrologers and the Accidental Dignity is not. There are few systems to objectively analyze Accidental Dignity that involves Essential Dignity with points. I found one during my research. A table from the Horary Astrology Plain & Simple book by Anthony Louis. It is reproduced from the system described in William Lilly’s Christian Astrology.

I contemplated using that system, however I tend to use the modern planets and decided to create my own for this particular research project. Below I listed the general point rules I used to assign Accidental Dignity to each planetary ruler. I could have added more rules, but decided to keep it neat and simple. Other astrologers may disagree with my method, understandably. However, this is literally an experiment on my part, and in the future I think I will create an enhanced Accidental Dignity system to utilize in the future.

Accidental Dignity Rules:

• Angular House = 3
• Cadent Houses = -3
• Square or Opposition to Retrograde Mars = -5
• Conjunct Pluto = -5
• Conjunct an Angle or Lot of Fortune = 4
• Conjunct Venus or Jupiter = 4
• Trine or Sextile Venus or Jupiter = 3

Notice how Saturn is not listed? This is because Saturn was the ruler of the 4^th House in the charts I analyzed, so I decided to exclude it from affecting the other planets. Saturn is the planet that represents Joe Biden, representing him well, being the elder statesman with a long track record in the government. By Essential Dignity Saturn is in his rulership and in term. Saturn also ruled the 3^rd house in many of these charts, which in a mundane reading would be the media. It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows US politics that Joe Biden has the most media support in the US.

Donald Trump by contrast, had one of two planets ruling the 10^th House in the charts. He either had the Sun or Moon, which actually suits him as well.. The Sun is the planet of raw personality and charisma and the Moon represents the people who are his diehard supporters. The two characteristics of raw personality and a strong following accurately encapsulate his short political career. Since most of the early voting periods begin in October, the Sun was in Libra and in fall in most of the charts. This fits because as a politician, his personality tends to rub many people, even his supporters, the wrong way.

Upon reviewing the results from the Chart Results Table of applying the Accidental Dignity rules above, one can see that the Swing States are almost evenly split between both candidates. In any State Trump got the Moon as his 10^th House ruler, he was able to pull enough Accidental Dignity to get a higher score than Biden. However, he only managed to win one State with the 10^th House being the Sun. This is mainly due to the Sun is stuck in the 12^th House for every chart and in Fall.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, despite having a well dignified Saturn, gets a lot of Accidental Debility because his Saturn is in conjunction with Pluto and squaring a retrograde Mars for the most of the charts. In modern astrology Pluto is a strong malefic planet that is equal or greater to that of Mars or Saturn in the traditional astrology. Combined with the square to the retrograde Mars, it is likely that he will be in a much weaker position than his dignified media presence would project.

Looking at the total scores for each candidate, one can see that there are a lot of negative attributes for their respective planets. This is truly an election of picking the candidate one hates the least! Even if your candidate wins, you may not be thrilled about it.

Plotting the results out in the Electoral Vote Map could mean that Joe Biden will win the election with more electoral votes than Trump. It will be close enough that if one state, like Florida, flips then Trump could win. Also, if something major changes, for example, scandal or a candidate dropping for health reasons, then these results might not be valid. These noted factors and variables could ultimately shift the voters preferences greatly and secure some of the swing states for one of the candidates.

In conclusion, these results show that Joe Biden will likely win the vote. He will probably win both the popular vote and the electoral vote. Trump does have a chance of winning the electoral vote if something major changes between now and then. However in my previous post I mentioned that Trump is more likely to remain President on January 20, 2021. How can these two results be reconciled? I’ll explain in the next election post.