Overview
You’re running for office, trying to screw over help out your constituents through reforming the system, but that one pesky primary opponent manages to beat you, or maybe your ideological opponent manages to snag a few more % just when you thought you were going to be a School Board member. I’ll try to help you identify what you need to do to win!
“Image People Image!” – That Guy
You might believe in Medicare For All, you might instead believe that the minimum wage is too damn high. It doesn’t matter (much)! No matter what the public thinks of these issues, all you have to do is make sure they like you and are enthusiastic to vote for you and not the other guy. It’s always nice to find a Democrat that is for flat taxes or a Republican that’s for universal health care because they’re the dumb ones. They’re the one’s you can easily beat in a primary but remember, you still have to beat the opposing party but it’s basically the same. it’s all about image. You have to make sure you’re like this guy:
and most certainly not
So now that I got that out of the way, I will add more to this guide however I’ll go over a couple of ways to help you win.
- Have you heard of Corey Booker? He’s running for President btw. You bought this game so you’ve probably heard of him. But the people who just bought Halo Reach most certainly haven’t heard of him. Get your name out there! You need to collect those extra voters
- Do research on your opponent and hammer him/her HARD on something the base is uncompromising of. If a Republican likes Universal Health Care, take him down. If a Democrat believes in gun rights, hammer them. Just make sure the opponent’s base disagrees with your opponent, otherwise you might harm your own chances.
- Address attack ads from your opponents. They lower your voter enthusiasm and you need people to hear your side of the story.
- Aim high, try becoming a Senator, even if you lose. The money you might get you can use for other campaigns and it still gets you name recognition.
- Make sure your policies aren’t bad, remember this is a democracy after all. Still you won’t win from policies alone but make sure you don’t have bad ones. It’s less ammunition for your opponents. You can tell if a policy is bad if your electorate doesn’t agree with you on it based on polling data
- Go into races where the incumbent won’t seek reelection. Incumbents always get an advantage from their position.
Remember, you’re not going to be able to win in 80% districts (unless they’re on your side!). Good luck on Election Day!
Mechanics of the Game
In the last section, I talked about how what really matters at the end of the day is your image. Here I’m going to describe the mechanics of the game to help your image as I felt that it wasn’t enough.
In the Wolf of Wall Street, the main character tries to get people to sell him a pen and they fail because they present traits of the pen instead of asking for the traits of the person they’re selling it to. Guess what, it’s the same with this game. Take a poll and look at what people care about. Usually it is either Economy, Health Care, Education, or (if you have a huge deficit) the budget. Make your platform on these issues to make sure that people know that you stand with them. Maybe you can stand out (look at Yang’s Freedom Dividend, or Trump’s Wall as examples), but don’t just use only those one trick ponies.
Conclusion: Make your Campaign Platform stand out but resonate with your constituents
Speeches are pretty decent if you are a local candidate as they are free ways of reaching out to political junkies. I have not determined if they are viable on a higher level. Do speeches if you want, but rallies and fundraisers are better in the long term.
Conclusion: Use speeches conservatively
These are a way of guaranteeing voters to be fooled swayed to vote for you, do rallies as much as possible unless it gets in the way of marketing.
Conclusion: Use rallies to fool voters into securing their support unless you need it more for marketing
The bread and butter of manipulating a foolish base. Thanks to Citizens United, you have unlimited power to fool people into supporting you. There are 4 types of ads. You have the type of target {Self-Promoting, Attack} and the type of content {General, Policy}.
These are the policies that explain to voters a rough idea of what you want in the realm of X. Ask yourself, what do you think Bernie Sanders would do for Health Care? What would Pres. Trump do for the economy? You have a general idea of the policies they’d perform.
Self-Promoting General Ads are good for generating voter enthusiasm (if people agree with your policies)
I’m going to cut to the chase with these, these are good for convincing voters on a policy you stand for. These are good for changing public opinion of a policy which is very important!!! There are issues like the Flat Tax that have 50% of the population divided. Convincing the slimmest of numbers to support it would give you a majority you need on that issue.
From my understanding these are meant to hurt the target’s enthusiasm among voters. The dev warns that this could have an adverse reaction and help your opponent. It is advised to go for Attack Policy Ads as they can sway people away from the target’s views.
My experience in the game tells me not to care so much of attack ads, however, they can harm your chances in swing states and really it’s about the independents.
You are 99% (exceptions do exist) likely not to get more than 6% votes of the opposite party. They are pretty much absolutely irrelevant and do not matter
IT’S ALL ABOUT THOSE NEUTRALS!
Who knows where those sickening independent voters stand on. They could vote for Hillary or Trump. It sickens me… but we unfortunately need this type of voter to promote bipartisanship approaches to governance and foster relations among all Americans so that this nation can prosper with both sides satisfied fool em into voting for us.
- Use attack ads (on policy) on controversial issues that independents are divided on. This can hurt a candidates chances of securing those neutrals
- Use self-promoting general ads on areas you are confident your base cares about and agrees with you on. Tie this to your platform as I believe that it does help. So for example Social Security and the General issue of Poverty
- Use self-promoting policy ads on issues you need to convince a sliver more of people to support you on. Remember that it affects up to 10% of all groups you’re going to get 20% bonus (because screw the opposite party) at most.
- Be very wary on using general attack ads on candidates unless you are certain they are going to hurt enthusiasm.
Errata
I’ve played a bit more of the game trying out new strategies and managed to secure Texas as a Progressive Democrat. This made me reconsider some of the campaigning tools I used.
This page contains some information I might not have covered correctly from the last two pages and contains extra advice. First understand that to win an election
People must be enthusiastic to vote for you.
To squeeze extra people to vote for you (besides rallies)
Change public opinion to make people agree more with you on the positions you have
- Use general ads to get voter enthusiasm up. Use general ads in areas that people care about and that they agree with you on.
- Use specific ads to force public opinion shifts and increase voter enthusiasm.
- If there’s a policy that you have that people don’t like but they care about. The best thing you can do is launch attack ads on your opponent if he disagrees. Attack ads don’t reduce voter enthusiasm but they increase public opinion for your stance.
On the Upcoming Patch
Hi, it’s been a while since I wrote this guide but I’ve still played the Political Process especially with some mods for politicians and turnout settings. Pretty good stuff you can find on this game’s Discord server under the advanced-options section. Anyway, you might be aware that there’s currently a major election update incoming, which I’ll call the Election Rework (ER) Patch.
For those who have have the beta version of it, a word of warning…
The Republicans always win control of Congress in the end!
But that’s why it’s a beta! Verm’s still gotta fix those kinks but it’s a very nice one because it reworks some important aspects of winning elections.
1) Rallies are very useful for bolstering your base
In the ER Patch, rallies matter a lot more now, a 60% enthusiastic base can sharply rise to 80% with the right platform and rallies. Not only does it increase your turnout by a static number, it also affects overall voter turnout. You can search for the exact election mechanics in the Advanced Options but I’ll explain why.
Average Democrat Voter Enthusiasm – 60% (set by you or the developer in options)
Candidate Enthusiasm Among Democrats – 70% (during an election season)
Turnout increase = (Average Democrat Enthusiasm – Candidate Enthusiasm)% = 70-60% = 10%
2) Many states are now reasonably flippable
That’s pretty much it. I’ve flipped states like Missouri as a Democrat and Virginia as a Republican much easier now. It’s a big change to the way you can win elections. It might be a little unbalanced but we’ll see how it shapes up.
3) Primaries are less annoying
Primaries no longer suck as much as they used to. We all hate losing primaries to some random loser and the game is much more competitive but rewarding if you pay attention.
4) Election Map helps show political ideologies
In a primary I played as a more moderate Democrat vs a progressive for President. What was interesting was seeing how the states were divided by ideology among Demorats. It’s helpful in identifying the type of voter you can fight for which might be useful for pivoting to rural states or the opposite.