What the Stars Say About Trump, the Midterms and a Rare Double Retrograde
By Deola Adeosun
If election week already feels like a test of your patience, celebrity astrologer Susan Miller says the sky agrees.
Voters head to the polls today with both Mercury and Venus retrograde, a pairing that is far less common than Mercury’s usual three retrogrades a year. Mercury, the planet astrologers link to communication, contracts, and counting, turned retrograde in Scorpio on Oct. 24. Venus has been retrograde since Oct. 3. Both turn direct on Nov. 13.
Miller, the founder of Astrology Zone, rarely talks politics publicly anymore. In an exclusive phone interview with COURIER, she made an exception.
Retrograde season, explained
“Mercury retrograde is a time that the universe forces us to reconsider our past actions and to fix things,” Miller said. “That’s usually when the pipe breaks in your wall, or your tooth has been getting a cavity, and you didn’t know it. It’s when things come to light, and you realize what needs to be fixed.”
Retrogrades usually get blamed for rushed, regrettable decisions. Miller doesn’t think that applies to this election.
“I think in this case, we are thinking,” she said. “There’s been so much public discussion. People must know which side they’re on at this point, and I just hope everybody goes to the polls.”
Miller said she has already voted by mail.
Don’t expect every answer on Election Night
Miller doesn’t predict who will win. But she said voters may need patience while Mercury finishes its backward trip.
“We may not know who won in every state,” she said. “We may have to wait.”
A slow count isn’t a sign that something went wrong. In any election year, close races, mail ballots and recounts can take days or weeks to settle, no matter what the planets are doing. In her October forecast on Astrology Zone, Miller advised readers not to reach a final conclusion about anything until after Nov. 13, and to leave a few days after that for things to settle.
“It’s big outer planets”
“It’s not the little planets that are causing all this,” Miller said. “It’s big outer planets.”
This year, several of the slowest-moving planets changed signs. Neptune and Saturn moved into Aries, Uranus into Gemini, and Jupiter into Leo, joining Pluto, which entered Aquarius in late 2024. Miller said the shift into fire and air signs is changing what people value, away from status symbols and toward ideas.
Whose house or car is bigger is “not going to matter anymore,” she said. “It’s what you know, where you’ve traveled, how sophisticated you are about different cultures and what you’re contributing to society.”
She also pointed to America’s own chart. Pluto takes 248 years to circle the sun, so this is the first time in the country’s history that Pluto has returned to where it was when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Uranus is closing in on its own return, and Pluto will stay in Aquarius until 2044.
“Usually this happens on a personal level. This is happening on a personal and collective [level],” Miller said. “How much do you love democracy? How much are you willing to fight for it? Have you taken it for granted? I think we all have. We always thought it would be here forever. … It’s fragile, and we didn’t know it was fragile.”
Trump’s Chart: “He’s always fighting”
Trump has Leo rising, the sign of attention and spectacle, with Mars sitting almost exactly on it.
“That makes him a fighter,” Miller said. “He’s always fighting.”
Jupiter, the planet of luck and expansion, is now moving through Leo and will reach Trump’s rising sign next summer. Miller said that will give him a lift in June and July 2027, but that it fades once Jupiter moves into Virgo at the end of July.
“He loses his fairy dust as soon as Jupiter moves into Virgo,” she said.
Miller is also watching a harmonious angle forming between Uranus and Pluto. She expected it to fuel innovation, especially in technology. But she noted that the last time the two planets lined up this way, in the early 1920s, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin rose to power and Adolf Hitler took control of the Nazi Party.
“It gives a need for the strong man. The populace falls for it. ‘I want a father figure,’” she said. “But I think people are starting to see. You hit their pocketbook, they notice it.”
Miller feels it at the register, too. She said she recently paid $11 for green grapes in New York.
Scorpio season and secrets
Mercury’s retrograde is happening entirely in Scorpio, the sign astrologers associate with secrets, power, and investigations.
“It gets a bad name,” Miller said. “Scorpio keeps secrets. But it also brings things to light. It rules law enforcement. … It rules people who try to do good to protect. So I think things are coming out, but they tend to come out of eclipses. Eclipses are the most dramatic tool that the universe uses to create change.”
On the Epstein files, she offered a kitchen metaphor: “the boiling pot on the back stove that everybody forgot about, and it blows up because you left the house with the gas on.”
Dates to watch
- Nov. 4: Mercury meets the sun at about 12 degrees Scorpio, the midpoint of the retrograde.
- Nov. 9: New moon in Scorpio.
- Nov. 13: Mercury and Venus both turn direct.
- Nov. 16: Mars meets Jupiter. Miller has called it a “golden day” for big career moves.
- Nov. 29: Mercury finally clears its post-retrograde shadow.
About Susan Miller
Susan Miller is one of the most widely read astrologers in the world. She founded Astrology Zone in December 1995, making it one of the earliest astrology sites on the internet. Today it draws about 13 million readers a year from 132 countries.
She is the author of 14 bestselling astrology books and writes monthly for Vogue Japan, Vogue China, W Korea and Amica. She previously wrote for Elle and InStyle.
Her Daily Horoscope app, launched in 2003, has won Webby honors. Her Moonlight app, launched in 2022, tracks moon phases through 2050. Her work has also gone beyond the page: in 2021, a solar system window display she designed appeared in 400 Louis Vuitton boutiques worldwide.
Read Susan Miller’s monthly forecasts at AstrologyZone.com, and find her apps, books, and wall calendar in the Astrology Zone shop.
