The Astrological Community Has Some Interesting Theories About Why Hillary Clinton Lost The 2016 Election

In the days, weeks, and months since Donald Trump's surprising victory, there's been endless speculation and debate about what cost Hillary Clinton the presidential election.

In May, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote that the October 28 Comey Letter very likely cost Clinton the presidency. There's also evidence that sexism, both conscious and unconscious, helped tear down one of the most qualified candidates in history. And all of this is to say nothing of potential Russian interference.

Well, here's a new one: Members of the astrological community believe that the exact time of Clinton's birth on October 26, 1947, may be responsible for her loss.

According to Broadly, political astrologers have spent decades obsessing over the exact moment Clinton's life began. Knowing a person's birth time is key to figuring out their rising sign, which is used to determine their house cusps: key information when it comes to making predictions about a person's life path.

Apparently, Clinton's time of birth has been a topic of debate for the past two decades. Although it's been reported that Clinton confirmed at least once she was born at 8 p.m., there are several rumored birth times for the former presidential candidate and the answer could determine whether she has an "eminent" birth chart or a "shitty" one.

"Astrologers are very resourceful when it comes to finding birth time," says Annabel Gat, Broadly's staff astrologer, "and Hillary's chart is a very notable case where it's just been impossible and such a drama."

Since the 1990s, astrologers have claimed that Clinton was actually born at 8 a.m. and some have stated she doesn't want the public to know her exact birth time. (Although this seems pretty unlikely, because there's no evidence that Clinton has any interest or knowledge regarding astrology.)

As it turns out, many wanted to believe that Clinton was born at 8 a.m. despite precious little evidence to support this assertion. An 8 a.m. birth time would have indicated she has an "eminent birth chart," and hope springs eternal.

"I think that people were gravitating towards the 8 AM time because Hillary looks really strong, and we all really wanted Hillary to win for a lot of reasons; the astrological community is overwhelmingly Democratic," explains Danny Larkin, the vice president of the Association for Young Astrologers.

For his part, Larkin believes Clinton was born at 8 p.m., but he thinks that, regardless of exact birth time, the candidate's chart was "shitty." He notes that her Venus is in "terrible shape," under attack by both Mars and Saturn, and her Sun is also under attack.

"There's something about her where she doesn't light up the room," Larkin says. "There's something about her sun; it's not able to shine as brightly as it wants to shine."

Still, there's nothing "utterly cataclysmic" in Clinton's chart. So it's, uh, a pretty big leap to chalk up her loss to astrology when there were so many other factors at play.

Nevertheless, political astrologists continue to speculate. Only this time, they're looking towards what Donald Trump's birth chart could mean for his future. Many astrologers say that the eclipse on August 21 bodes terribly for Trump because it falls directly on Leo, his rising sign.

"All of the astrologers are talking about it… It's this really wild, prominent thing that everybody in the country is going to see in August, and it happens to be very much closely tied into Trump's chart," says an unidentified political astrologist.

But, of course, nothing is ever certain: "In terms of what that specifically means, and in terms of whether that's something negative for [Trump] or something that's negative for the country as a whole, I don't know," he adds.

This information is interesting and all, but I'm sticking to my theory that a perfect storm of external factors (the aforementioned email scandal, Benghazi witch hunt, sexism, and overall dislike and distrust for Clinton) is responsible for her loss.