Election Day 2025

November 4, 2025 was a big day in American politics. There were several elections, several ballot measures on the docket, and tensions running high across the country. In perusing the media, the only important race would appear to have been that for the Mayor of New York City. But there was much more going on of probably greater importance. That said, Zohran Mamdani swept the New York City mayoral race with a clear margin of victory over Mario Cuomo. His victory was significant, but not the most important victory in yesterday’s vote. For more, read on…

We begin here with the most obvious election, that for the Mayor of New York. What do we know about the Mayor-elect? Mamdani is a Muslim of the Twelver Shia sect, was born in Uganda, has an American-Syrian wife, is a democratic socialist, and ran on a platform of rent control, city-owned grocery stores, free bus fares, raising the corporate tax rate to 11.5%, a flat tax of 2% on people earning over $1 million a year, and so on. None of that is ultimately important, however, for reasons which we will outline as we go along. But we start with his astrology. Mamdani’s chart is below (bigger):

Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda on 18 October 1991 at 1:15 in the morning Uganda time, according to his mother. The birth chart slows 0° Leo rising, which may or may not be accurate. 1:15 is a rounded off time. He could have Cancer rising, actually. But Leo rising gives Mamdani the magnetism he displayed during the election. Along with that, we see Mars and Mercury conjunct and square the Horizon axis, with the Moon trine the Sun.

Mamdani is an idealist in essence, born into fortunate family circumstances. His father is a professor at Columbia University, an anthropologist and a political commentator. His mother is a noted filmmaker. You might know of one of her films starring a young Denzel Washington from his early days in film. Both of his parents were born in India. Both of his parents are against the genocide. But their opinions on Israel itself are mixed. .

Zohran has a lot of romantic notions about how life should be lived, from his chart. These qualities are shown in the Sun/Moon pairing, the Sun trine the Moon, Venus conjunct Jupiter and both of those trine the conjunction of Uranus, Neptune and the north node. His abrupt and uncompromising speech is shown by the Mercury/Mars conjunction square the Horizon axis. There is a danger there for him, though, because the Mercury/Mars conjunction is square Saturn, the latter which is conjunct the Descendant. He has a high opinion of himself, amplified if the rising sign is Leo. The combination just described needs control and moderation if he is to be able to use his abilities to good effect politically. With any luck at all, which he has, that control and moderation will come through his wife – Rama Duwaji.

The synastry between Mamdani and Duwaji is too much to comment upon here, but it shows her to have a positive, guiding and calming influence on Mamdani’s Saturn/Mars/Mercury combination. Duwaji herself (30 June 1997, Houston TX, time unknown) is a noted artist, illustrator and ceramicist. She has the Sun in Cancer and Moon in Taurus, with the Sun square to Mars. She is the realist in the marriage and a steady hand – and a great advisor and support to Mamdani at a personal level. As for political advice, Mamdani would do well to gather around himself a group of old and trusted hands in New York politics. Mamdani’s idealism stands out in his election platform. His victory chart with transits and directions is below (bigger):

We note in particular the influence of Neptune. Neptune and Uranus have co-rulership over elections. Uranus governs the change that elections bring, whereas Neptune governs through the emotions of the public, which figure so strongly in political campaigns – along with all the campaign promises the politicians make. In the election chart for Mamdani transiting Neptune sits on his natal Vertex and trines his ascendant. We see the transiting triangle of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto that has been with us for months now all figuring positively with his horizon axis. That triangle was also joined by transiting Mars, having just passed his directed Sun, the latter aspecting his natal Neptune. Transiting Mars was trine his Ascendant on the day. And lastly, we see his directed Midheaven aspecting his natal Sun and Venus. With transiting Pluto on his Descendant he trounced his opponents.

The BBC had this clip on him after his win:

“His bold, left-wing platform has energised progressives, shaken up his Democratic Party, and drawn harsh criticism from President Donald Trump [Mamdani won Trump’s birthplace] and other Republicans. “Today we have spoken in a clear voice: hope is alive,” Mamdani told supporters after triumphing in the contest.

Unlike his more established opponents, Mamdani’s new perspective, youth and new left-wing platform excited and ultimately won over voters eager for a fresher politician. “Let City Hall, with our compassion, our conviction and our clarity, be the light that our city and our nation so desperately need,” Mamdani said on the week he was elected.”

In Europe he would be labeled a centrist. It was the biggest voter turnout in New York since the mayoral election of 1966. George Galloway and Judge Napolitano (an old scion of New York) had a good rundown on the election results. Just think for a moment, though: Where have we heard ‘hope and change’ and references to ‘light’ kind of talk before, before we get ahead of ourselves? He might mean what he said during his campaign, but NYC politics is as tough as it gets. And Mamdani is another politico who supposedly came out of nowhere. However, in looking at his parents Zohran already had connections and media exposure. On top of that he faces stiff opposition from vested interests. We will come back to all that.

Given the preceding, what shows in the chart for New York with his election? Mamdani will be mayor over the five boroughs of the greater New York area. The consolidation of NYC was legislated and came into effect at midnight at New Year 1898, so we look to the consolidation chart for NYC with transits and directions for the election result, which is below (bigger):

I recall a certain song lyric:

Just a quick glance at the chart with transits and directions shows that, indeed, New Yorkers are ready and primed for change – with a humanistic note. They liked what this young man had to say. Directed Uranus spells it out: conjunct the Descendant, opposite the natal Jupiter/Ascendant conjunction and square to the natal Sun. Directed Neptune is sesquisquare the natal Pluto, throwing the plutocrats (Pluto) into disarray. And to top it off, transiting Mars was on the natal Uranus, showing an upset.

Election Day 2025 was a bad hair day for Donald Trump. I had forecast Trump would be facing difficulties in the first part of this month (Topic: ‘Trump and Biden’), and now we see why. At the time I had thought there might have been a health scare (and there may have been without our knowing) due to his astrology. But he did get some bad news from the elections, which no doubt would have raised his blood pressure a few points.

To other elections, there were key elections the Republicans lost aside from New York. There was the vote on proposition 50 in California. “Proposition 50 is a direct response to a Republican power grab orchestrated by President Trump and state leaders in Texas, who redrew Congressional district lines to gain five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.” Proposition 50 cancels the Republican gains in the House, with California’s win. Republicans, of course, cried foul. Redistricting is also known by another name – gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is local American politics at its best, noting the sarcasm.

In the Cincinnati mayoral race J.D. Vance’s brother was the Republican contender – and suffered a humiliating defeat, having garnered just 22% of the vote, even with his brother stumping for him. The gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey both went to Democrats, both with very comfortable margins. Both the governors-elect are women, have military backgrounds and are ex-intelligence agents. They campaigned directly against Trump. Trump’s people had Trump out of the country in the week before the elections because they saw what was coming, in order that the losses could not be blamed on him. Yet, more cogent analysis shows it is exactly this administration’s policies that are costing the Republicans elections.

Trump reacted to the four main victories for Democrats with a cryptic post: “…AND SO IT BEGINS!” So, why are the Democrats winning BIGLY now? It’s very simple: It’s the economy, stupid! Trump weighed in on why the Republicans lost:

‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters.”

So you say, Donald. Trump was on the ballot via the Republican candidate for New Jersey, and his candidate lost. Trump went on to blame everyone but himself for the Republican losses, in typical Mars/Ascendant in Leo style. He was lambasted in social media as behaving like a petulant child. Just to add, the Democrats flipped two seats in the Georgia Public Services Commission race. The Commission sets the rates for all public services in Georgia, which had seen sharp rises since 2023 under Republican governance.

The fact is people are worried. Tariffs are beginning to bite American consumers. The administration refuses to release the Epstein files. They are covering up the Kirk assassination. The wars that are draining the American economy have not ended. American taxpayers are out of pocket for those wars, in other words. Then there is the undying support for the genocide in Palestine by Trump, who is now seen as being in the pockets of the Zionists. Mamdani’s criticism of Israel was a significant factor that won support for his campaign. Then there is the refusal to use emergency funds for SNAP during the government shutdown. The shutdown is dragging on (Of course, it is all the fault of the Democrats, isn’t it?) The Big Beautiful Bill ain’t so beautiful to the average American any longer. In fact it is turning out to be a big bulging bill the average American will have to wear. We could go on, but perhaps the trend is clear.

To put the matter simply, the majority American public is dissatisfied with the Trump administration and the Republican Party in general. They are dissatisfied with Democrats, too. Americans in the states where elections were held voted with their feet, as the saying goes. That said, the states where the elections were won are legacy safe Democrat seats. But the elections set a tone for the midterms next year, which will be hard-fought. And so it begins. However, there is something more important to consider here.

In terms of the two major parties recent polling shows the Democrats trailing behind the Republicans in approval ratings. Of course, polls change day by day according to public sentiment. People are gradually waking up to the fact that the American two-party system is instead a uni-party. American elections are won by whoever can field the most money and advertising space. At least, that has been the name of the game in the past. Important elections and referendums in the US are generally a contest between which oligarch class could win the day. The victory of Mamdani in New York has set the uni-party system back on its heels for the moment.

American politics is changing. A new generation is coming to the forefront, and combined with the worsening state of the American economy and standards of living in general there is a rising tide of public opinion that America is moving in the wrong direction. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are addressing the issues Americans want to see changed. Support for Israel, for instance, which used to be assumed across the American electorate, has cratered because of the genocide over the past two years.

One of the more interesting features of Mamdani’s election victory was that around 1/3 of the Jews in New York supported him. There are non-Zionist Jews, believe it or not. A significant number of American Jews in particular are starting to turn against Israel now. His victory has served the Israel-firsters notice that their cause is quickly becoming box office poison in the main Jewish center of the United States. This brings us to why his election actually matters instead of his background:

• The American people want change, meaning they want the political class to represent the people’s interests instead of the interests of donors and foreign interests.
• Zionist interests can no longer assume they have the support of the American public. His victory also showed that the Jewish voting bloc is not monolithic. Clearly 1/3 of New York’s Jews oppose Israel’s policies as they exist at the moment.
• Mamdani’s victory among the largest Jewish population outside of Israel is a demonstration that unless the Zionists change their behavior they are facing a very sharp rebuke.
• Mamdani spoke to the interests of the average American instead of the business class, and this in the beating heart of capitalism in the United States.
• The American people like the idea of democratic socialism, despite all the bleating about communism, far left radicalism and so on that is often spewed across social media. The people who decry Mamdani as some sort of far left, Marxist, socialist, what have you, really have no idea about what they are talking about.
• And lastly, though there are other points we can make, Mamdani’s election is a direct confrontation with the policies set by the Trump administration.

There are some things we should know about Mamdani, however, which will show themselves over the coming months. Firstly, his single biggest donor is George Soros, Hungarian mega-billionaire. That in itself has many people alarmed. Soros paid many millions of dollars into Mamdani’s campaign. So, it is not as if this was a David and Goliath kind of campaign. Mamdani came from an upper-middle-class background and a certain amount of wealth. The fact that there was big money behind him as well as big money behind his detractors shows that this campaign was once again a battle between oligarch classes.

Mamdani also faces a very well entrenched system in New York, which no matter how hard he tries, will resist him at many steps. If there is one bloc in New York where he will meet the stiffest resistance it will be the landlord class. America exists as a rentier economy, where housing and commercial real estate are used for speculation rather than for living. There is huge money in New York real estate and the idea of capping rent increases for four years will not go down well with developers and the landlords.

We might list a few of the vested interests in New York who are looking at Mamdani a little bit askance at the moment: Wall Street, the powerful political people who have held power in New York for years, and organized crime to start, (which had a stranglehold on construction and waste removal.) Nothing moved in New York in terms of construction without making a deal with the Mafia until the RICO laws were enforced in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The NY/NJ mafia have moved on to other ‘businesses’, but still ply their ‘trade’ in New York. And lastly there are the wealthy dynastic families in New York stretching back over a century in many cases who will be strongly opposed to any increase in taxes, along with the corporations who are based in New York.

If Mamdani tries to go too quickly in moving forward his policies – his chart does not scream out patience – he will quickly come afoul of his efforts. One of the biggest criticisms of him aside from what has just been mentioned is his youth and inexperience. He needs to consult with the old hands who know New York and how things run if he wants to get anywhere. That said, however, the people of New York still handed him the victory. They might be calling him a radical leftist in Washington now, but once he gets in the office and finds out how things really work, Mamdani may well come to be known as a centrist instead. We will see where things stand in six months’ time.

None of this is meant to throw cold water on a victory that so many people are now celebrating. Nor is it meant to confirm the fears of people crying about it. His victory is a breath of fresh air in a system of American politics that is old, stale, riddled with corruption and ripe for overhaul.

When we begin to see smear campaigns coming out against Mamdani’s administration and the man himself, we will know that he is making his moves and seeking to enact what he promised during the campaign. No politician that earnestly sticks to his convictions and seeks to make changes in the system does so without making powerful enemies. That’s the way politics works in the United States. When any politician goes up against the vested interests, the media will be used to attack him – in many cases the very same media that sang his praises during the campaign.

For all the people alarmed because a Muslim is about to govern New York, your fears are unfounded. You have been sold a line about how Muslims will lead the country down a wrong path and Sharia law will be introduced. Rubbish. Neither Iran nor Hamas have funded Mamdani. His major backer is a white, Western globalist. Consider the pro-Israel story is collapsing and ‘the lobby’ wants to divert attention from the Zionists. The US will be better off without AIPAC.

For all the people alarmed because they think a ‘radical leftist’ has been elected and the financial capital of the country will be thrown in the waste heap, Mamdani’s policies are mild outside of the US and are just accepted as being normal in Europe. Most people actually like democratic socialism.

There is always fearmongering by vested interests and the ignorant when any politician who speaks of change is elected. We had a similar story in Italy when Meloni was elected. People were afraid the country would turn into a fascist dystopia. There are no brown shirts in the streets. Life in Italy has gone on and Meloni has turned out to be another centrist. ‘The system’ tends to pull upstarts into line. Politics in Italy has remained a game show – but it is still better than the politics of the UK, France and Germany. At least we get to throw the bums out every year or so and then elect another one. I jest, of course…or do I?

So, if Mamdani manages to get rents frozen for a few years, if people get free bus fares, if he manages to moderately tax the rich and corporations, if he gets to arrest Netanyahoo (oh, to dream), if people will be able to buy food at a reasonable price from a government grocery store, do you think New Yorkers will complain? Do you think it will be the end of America? Wake up! And if he succeeds and you are worried, he could never be President. He wasn’t born in the US. Obama was. However, Rama Duwaji could. Hmmm…

New York aside, the real test for the US will be in a year’s time at the midterms, which will decide the makeup of Congress for the next two years and the fate of Trump’s and Republican policies. As the old saying goes, a week is a long time politics. For now the Republicans will be doubling down in their efforts to shore up their chances for the midterms. The government shutdown will be ending soon as well, at which point we may well see some new revelations emerging about the Washington elite class. Epstein’s ghost is hovering around. The Israeli cease-fire, if we can call it that, is quickly collapsing. And there are earthquakes, political and military, in the wings in other parts of the world. That’s another story. Probably more worrying, Wall Street is blowing bubbles.

As for the other wins for Democrats, the two new Governors will probably do a good job. They know how the system works. Cincinnati will survive, too. Take that, J.D.! Of course, The Reds could stand some more mojo. And I miss WKRP. Thanksgiving is just around the corner. By the way, if we ever want to see the sort of change that most Americans (we) want we need to get past the idea that American politics is a team sport, that in elections it is either one or the other. The so-called upper crust in the US likes to see us divided and fighting among ourselves. It keeps the focus away from them. Our leaders in the higher echelons of American politics do not run the show. They are there to keep the gears greased and the wheels turning for the machine the Big Money donors run.

In finishing here, hopefully, Georgians (the state, not the country) may begin to see more reasonable utility rates as a result of this election. But for the moment, a new light shines in New York, starting when the Big Apple lands at midnight at the New Year celebrations. We wish Mamdani and New Yorkers across the board a new start, prosperity, and the change they sought when they elected this young upstart. As for the Republicans, maybe they need a serious rethink.

And now it begins…Good luck, New York! It’s onwards to the midterms!

Featured pic from Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB)