Astrology of the 1880 Presidential Election

The astrology of the Presidential election in the U.S. is a popular and contentious topic among astrologers. In the run-up to the most recent Presidential election (2012) I studied Aries Ingress horoscopes for the United States to see if there was a common thread indicating the winner. I did find a method that seemed to work, and used it to present a prediction of Barack Obama winning the 2012 election, at the New Orleans United Astrology Conference (UAC) in May of that year. You can read the details of the 2012 prediction of the US election result.  That article compares the 1880 and 2012 Presidential elections, as they had some astrological similarities.

Since then, I have received a number of queries to see the rest of the data, and to share the method. We are about 18 months away from the 2016 election, and speculation as to the winner is gathering steam. Throughout the next 18 months, I will be writing a series of articles, one for each election chart starting in 1880, through 2016. This will allow interested readers to follow my reasoning and examine the method used. This study is unique in that I came to the charts with few preconceived notions about how the charts should show the winning party; I relied on them to show the method, since we already knew the presidential election result.

Sometimes I get asked why I chose 1880 as the beginning of my series; I simply worked backwards from the then-known results (2008) until I felt I had a good handle on how the horoscopes indicated the winner each time.  By the time I got to 1880, I had run across some very obvious horoscopes, and a few challenging ones, so felt I had a good sample.

1880 Presidential Election Horoscope

As always, we cast the Aries Ingress horoscope set for Washington, D.C. in a Presidential Election year.  The Aries Ingress is a horoscope set for the moment the Sun enters Aries, the start of the astrological New Year.  It is a long-standing tradition that the moment of the horoscope holds the seeds for major events for that location in the upcoming 12 months.

 1880 Aries Ingress, 3/20/1880, 0:05:27 am LMT, Washington, D.C.

Assumptions for Each Ingress Horoscope

The incumbent party are the 10th house of the “king.”   This assignment goes back at least as far as the Hellenistic astrologers of 2000 years ago, though I am mainly investigating to the more recent medieval Arabic astrological texts.  The challenger party is the 4th house and its ruler. This is because the 4th house is the 7th from the 10th; the king’s opponent. In our Aries Ingress horoscope, we examine what is happening to each candidate’s house to see who wins.

I use traditional planetary rulers of signs only (no Uranus, Neptune, Pluto), though all planets are displayed in the chart.

1880 Horoscope Analysis

1. The 10th house is ruled by Virgo, and its ruler is Mercury stationing in Aries, in the 4th house. There are no planets in the 10th house, so we look exclusively to the testimony of the ruling planet. The very next aspect about to occur is the Moon in Cancer (dignified in the sign of its domicile) about to form a square aspect to Mercury.  Square aspects are not considered “easy,” but we will see in chart after chart that the nature of the aspect does not matter, so long as a candidate’s planet connects with another dignified planet somehow.

2. The 4th house is ruled by Jupiter in Pisces conjunct the 4th house cusp. The fourth house has a dignified Jupiter on the cusp, and the Sun, exalted in Aries, just inside the cusp. Mercury and Saturn in Aries are there, as well. Jupiter does not have any planets applying to it very soon; certainly no earlier than the immediate Moon-Mercury square.

Conclusion: The incumbent party stays in power.

Two Key Rules for Predicting the Winner of the Election…

1. If either party’s planetary ruler applies to a dignified planet, or in a sign where the other planet is received by the candidate’s ruler. If so, that candidate will win.

2. If a planet or Node is closely conjunct the 10th or 4th house cusp that is not the 10th or 4th ruler and in the same sign as the cusp, its benefic/malefic nature helps or harms the incumbent or opponent, respectively.

In the 1880 horoscope, if only Jupiter in Pisces was not also the ruler of the 4th house here; its presence would have handed the challenger the White House.  A candidate’s planet on their own house cusp might indicate that candidate staying home, as it were.  The other planet on the 4th house cusp is the exalted Sun in Aries, which would be helpful if only it wasn’t in a different sign than the house cusp.  Tough luck.

…and Some Minor Observations:

3.  It does not seem to make a difference either way that a late degree is on the 4th/10th house cusps.

4.  One candidate’s planet (in this case, Mercury, ruling the incumbent Republicans) placed in the other candidate’s house does not seem to harm the candidate ruled by the emplaced planet.

Outcome: What Actually Happened in the 1880 Presidential Election

The Republican Party had the White House before the election, but the incumbent president, Rutherford Hayes, did not seek re-election. The Republican party nominated James A. Garfield as their candidate. The Democratic challenger was Winfield S. Hancock, a Civil War general. The race was quite close; Garfield won 214 electoral college votes to Hancock’s 155, with each side garnering about 48% of the popular vote. Wikipedia notes that “this was the closest election ever in terms of popular vote (with a margin of fewer than 10,000) and states carried…”  (Note that some sources state the margin was 2000 popular votes.)

The incumbent party retained the White House, though the actual holder of the Presidential office had changed.

[Note: An earlier version of this article ran on the Gryphon Astrology blog in 2014, but this is an updated version. As I plan to write more articles for the series, I wanted them all on one site.]