Nostradamus predictions for 2020 USA elections: who will win?

One of French mystic Michele de Nostredame’s four line prophecies is being interpreted as suggesting a win for Donald Trump.

By David Nelson

Did French mystic and author Nostradamus predict the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential Election? Of course he didn’t, but that hasn’t stopped some of his enthusiastic fans claiming he did write a prophesy as to whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden would win the 2020 elections.

Nostradamus, or Michel de Nostredame, published his book of Les Prophéties in 1566. It’s a book comprising 942 four line poems (called quatrains), supposedly predicting future events. According to him they cover the period from the date of publication to the year 3797 (which had been suggested at the time as possibly being the date for the end of the world). The list of events people say he has predicted include the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon and Hitler.

The poems in general are vague enough that they can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, making it easy to fit events that have occurred to one of the poems.

Which Nostradamus prediction is thought to be about the 2020 election?

The Nostradamus-penned quatrain which is being applied by some to this US election is as follows:

Century I: 40

The false trumpet concealing madness,
Will cause Byzantium to change its laws.
From Egypt there will go forth a man who wants
The edict withdrawn, changing money and standards.

People who believe in the ability of Nostradamus are interpreting this to mean Trump wins again (though equally, it could be taken to mean Trump won the first time around in 2016).

Under this line of interpretation, Trump is the ‘false trumpet’, with the ‘concealing madness’ apparently in relation to theories that he may be suffering from and concealing some form of dementia. If the ‘false trumpet’ were able to cause Byzantium (which would likely now mean Greece) to change its laws, that would mean Trump would still have to be president to be able to force such a change.

That’s one interpretation, but it is, of course, all nonsense. No Nostradamus quatrain has even been actually used to PREDICT a specific event. The only events they ‘foresee’ are vague claims for general things that were almost bound to happen, or prophesies that could be applied to a number of events.

As skeptic James Randi (who very sadly died recently) pointed out, the reputation of Nostradamus depends on people fitting his predictions to events that have already occurred or are inevitable.

Better than Nostradamus: the polls

If you want to know who is going to win the election, you’re better off trusting in the polls. Despite a margin of error, they’re more likely to give you an accurate answer. And, even better, you know they’re actually referring to the election in question.