Who do US psychics predict will win the election?

A week away from the American election, and the polls cannot tell us who will be president. But can they ever? A poll is, as the pundits always remind us, a snapshot of public opinion, not a prediction. Nate Silver himself said that anyone dissecting an individual poll is ‘just doing astrology’. So what predictions are actual astrologers making about the election?

Under the electoral college system, nationwide data is not as important as predictions for the swing states, so I look for astrologers in the seven states which will decide the election. The drawback to this methodology quickly becomes apparent: predicting the future is illegal in half of them.

Beck Lawrence runs the Serpent’s Key, a ‘witchery and apothecary’ in Pennsylvania (19 electoral college votes). ‘I was getting ready to set up my shop – our grand opening was going to be on Halloween – and the police chief came in with another officer and said, just so you know, any sort of divination for financial gain is illegal.’ The maximum penalty for one who ‘pretends for gain or lucre, to tell fortunes or predict future events, by cards, tokens… or by consulting the movements of the heavenly bodies’ is a $2,500 fine or a year in prison.

Beck is suing the police chief for breaching her First Amendment rights, but is able to tell me – ‘for entertainment purposes only’, as the disclaimer on every wall of the shop reads – that there will be political unrest and restructuring as Pluto moves into Aquarius. As we speak over Zoom, she reaches for her tarot deck for confirmation: the first card is the Tower – quite literally a White House, she giggles – quickly followed by the four of wands, reversed, which ‘kind of speaks to a lack of clarity about the situation.