Damian Mikhail, of the Horizon party, won the 2025-2026 WUSA presidency.

Mikhail won with 3,175 votes, 393 ahead of runner-up Alex Chaban. Friday Saleh, who announced their presidency after the nomination period, garnered 953 votes. 

Results were announced Monday evening, Feb. 10. 

“It’s mostly set in, but it’s still weird because [the results] came out so late at night. So I didn’t really have time to celebrate and study for a midterm at the same time,” Mikhail said in an interview Tuesday morning, Feb. 11. He added that he spent most of the day taking down posters while waiting for the results.

While Mikhail takes office in May, there will be a transition period over the next few months where he will learn about the role from 2024-2025 president Nicholas Pfiefle. Mikhail’s first priority will be governance reform. “Governance is one of those key fundamental issues that really enables the board of directors to push on bigger issues for students that directly affect them,” Mikhail said.

Remington Zhi, also of the Horizon party, won the vice president role with 4,252 votes, 2,334 ahead of Onella Kulatunga. 

“I am very excited about the board this coming year,” Zhi said. “I’m happy about the Horizon slate and the many strong independent candidates on board.”

Winning director candidates include Katie Traynor, Manohar Merochini, Rida Sayed (Horizon), Samir Sharma (Horizon), Iman Khan, Skyler Duggan, Muhammad Kanji, Melanie Bouzanne (Horizon), Arya Razmjoo, Andrew Chang (Horizon), and Rory Norris. 

In the only competitive senate race, Sayed won against Nikolai Jablonka for the two year engineering senate role. Alex Pawelko (Horizon) was acclaimed to the two-year role of math senator and Christopher Lim was acclaimed as the two-year health senator. Misha Khan was acclaimed to the one-year role of at-large senator, while Razmjoo was acclaimed as the two-year at large senator.

In addition to winning the presidency and vice presidency, the Horizon party saw four out of their six director candidates win. 

Razjmoo, who was appointed VP for the current year, will now be a director and at-large senator. 

A total of 7,562 votes were cast out of an eligible 34,870, a 21.69 per cent turnout. This is down from last year’s turnout of 25.17 per cent and above the 2023-2024 voter turnout of 3.2 per cent.