ANS Editorial

The surprising Presidential election of 2016

Pollsters were not the only ones who erred. At the recent ISAR 2016 Symposium in Southern California the 12 astrologers who predicted Donald Trump would never live in the White House got it wrong as well.

For sure, there were other astrologers weighing in on the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, including those   predicting a different outcome. In fairness to the astrologers, an important piece of evidence – the exact time of Hillary Clinton’s birth – was missing. As any astrologer will tell you, the exact birth time is needed to make accurate predictions.   Different astrologers have made the case for either morning, mid-afternoon or early evening delivery times, but her actual birth time remains a mystery.

At the ISAR event, organizers stressed that the astrological experts who agreed to publicly predict the Presidential outcome did not have this important information. Still, in hindsight, it should be noted that Hillary did manage to win the popular vote by more than a million votes. However, like Al Gore in 2000, she was penalized by the way Americans tally Presidential election results in the Electoral College. This antiquated, state-oriented counting system was passed on to us by the nation’s founding fathers and has been unfairly skewing representation of the electorate ever since.

At this point in human history the American public is more likely to believe pollsters over astrologers in such matters. But about 95 percent of the pollsters got the call on President-elect Trump wrong as well, including Dr. Sam Wang of the prestigious Princeton Election Consortium.

In 2012, Dr. Wang correctly predicted the Presidential winner in 49 of 50 states, but was well off the mark two years later. In a CNN interview with Mike Smercornish, the pollster promised he would “eat a bug” on live TV if Mr. Trump got more than 240 Electoral College votes in 2016 (270 are needed to win). Dr. Wang kept his promise, taking a healthy, televised bite from a tin of Gourmet Crickets, which he topped with a dash of honey. John the Baptist feasted on similar fare when he wandered in the wilderness, he explained.

Astrologer Armand Diaz summed a remarkable and surprising year in this way:

“During this year’s election cycle there were two prominent aspects that would affect the world in many ways. The planets Saturn and Neptune formed a stressful square for the entire year, creating a great deal of uncertainty and challenges to our belief systems. Uranus, an erratic, revolutionary energy, pulled away from Pluto to go off on his own in the very independent sign of Aries. In the midst of the Saturn/Neptune uncertainty, Uranus signaled a Year of the Outsider. Even the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, and if that isn’t ‘outsider’ success, just what is?

“The three most prominent candidates were all outsiders, Hillary Clinton perhaps only because she is a woman. Bernie Sanders was long an independent and was ideologically far from the middle in U.S. politics (although his ideas would not be so radical in Europe and parts of South America). And of course, Donald Trump always seemed like a long shot, for so many reasons.

“To step back and see that no matter who won the election, it would be someone who represented an outside influence and a break from the status quo may not be as satisfying as calling the winner (or as deflating as being wrong about it). But it is rich in symbolic meaning – and that is what astrology is truly great at doing at the level of the collective consciousness.

“As an astrologer, I often think of the story of King Croesus, who asked the oracle at Delphi if he should attack Persia. ‘If you do,’ the priestess replied, speaking for the god Apollo, ‘a great kingdom will fall.’

“Enthused, Croesus attacked, and indeed a great kingdom fell – his own. I take that story as a reminder that there is always something mysterious and unknowable, a trickster’s play, running through the Cosmos,” Diaz said.