Election Day Predictions A Win For Astrology

Or maybe not.

During a panel discussion in which astrologers were asked to predict the 2012 election outcome astrologers Chris Brennan, Gary Christian, Edith Hathaway, Nina Gryphon and Claude Weiss described the substantively different astrological predictive techniques they used to independently arrive at similar conclusions. Though some suggested the race might be close, all of the panelists insisted the challenger’s chances were slim to none.

Lucky guesses?

The astrologers made their predictions in May before the political conventions and debates could sway public opinion. At a similar event four years earlier, six astrologers unanimously predicted then Senator Obama would become the first African American President in U.S. history.

The United Astrology Congress (UAC) event is held every four years and dates for the last two events have coincided with election years in the U.S. For those keeping score, astrologers predicting the election outcome at these events are currently batting 1,000 with eleven hits and no misses.

Of course, this doesn’t prove anything.

The exact number of astrologers who made 2012 election year predictions isn’t known but is presumed to be a sizable number. Astrologer Chris Brennan, one of the UAC panelists who got it right, scoured traditional and online media sources to find 49 separately published election year forecasts by astrologers.

In his survey, Brennan found that astrologers favored President Obama by a two-to-one margin with a small hand full claiming the election was too close to call. In other words, astrologers did a better job of predicting the outcome than some biased political pollsters for the losing side were able to do.

But there may be more important take-away lessons. Like weather patterns and investment cycles, election outcomes produce testable data. In democratic countries, a voluminous amount of historical election year data is available to test the veracity of the various predictive methods astrologers use when making these predictions. Simply, one candidate in every race usually emerges with a discernible astrological edge, i.e., seems favored by astrological indications.

In an ANS newsmaker interview Nina Gryphon describes a unique study that analyzes outcomes in U.S. Presidential elections dating to 1880. Using traditional techniques first set down by ancient Sumerians four millennia ago, Gryphon was able to use this data to predict winners and losers in past U.S. elections with uncanny accuracy.

The various approaches used by other astrological forecasters might as easily be tested in the same way.