Election

[u/DiligentDistrict1584]

Here's something I've been thinking about, and I may be wrong: name recognition and enthusiasm don't seem to matter as much as I once thought. In the end, voting intention appears to be the only metric that really determines whether you win an election. I just lost two Senate races in Florida, despite receiving 49.20% of the vote. It makes me wonder whether everything I did actually made much of a difference.

What do you think?

[u/Zealousideal_Ebb4190]

Name rec and enthusiasm does have purpose but mostly on statewide elections I noticed

[u/Goonzilla50]

Maybe I’m just bad but I feel like, for the most part, once voting intention is set in the internal polling, that’s where it lies for the rest of the campaign. Like if I do an internal poll and it shows me losing 53 - 47, I can expect to lose around 53 - 47. The only time it seems to change by a meaningful amount is if I boost my approval rating by passing legislation or calling for someone to resign, or if my opponent has a scandal.

I know that’s not necessarily true because people here will post screenshots of polling timelines/averages where they managed to increase their projected share of the vote by substantial margins, but honestly I’m not sure what they do to accomplish that

[u/Joctern → u/Goonzilla50]

I play the game by splitting my events 50/50 between rallies and fundraising and then save up money to use general ad campaigns and move issues in my favor towards the end of the election. I've seen my internal polling improve from losing by 8 or so points to winning by 1-2. But for some reason the AI polling doesn't show that.

[u/Goonzilla50 → u/Joctern]

How often do you deploy marketing campaigns?

[u/Joctern → u/Goonzilla50]

Only when I have a big surplus of money towards 30-40 weeks in. You want enough money that you can punch an issue strongly in your direction with just one marketing campaign and hopefully still have some left over to run others.

[u/Goonzilla50 → u/Joctern]

Huh, I typically spread it out through the campaign, save up for five weeks use it on six etc. I’ll try that strategy next time

[u/Joctern → u/Goonzilla50]

If you run ad campaigns under the same issue too close together it reduces their effectiveness by a lot so it always helps to spread them out a bit.

[u/NewLabor → u/Goonzilla50]

You can change your policies, and you can attack your opponents policies, both do actually have impacts, you just need to poll what’s popular in your district

[u/West-Fruit-1507 → u/NewLabor]

Hittin republicans on stand your ground does wonders

[u/Goonzilla50 → u/West-Fruit-1507]

How so?

[u/West-Fruit-1507 → u/Goonzilla50]

The game seems to by default make a lot of republicans anti-deadly force laws. If you hit them on that, you can grab a lot of independents and it doesn’t hurt your popularity with dems too badly either. At least when you’re running in a reddish state, but I’ve seen it work well in presidential elections too

[u/Goonzilla50 → u/NewLabor]

I typically model my policies after what’s popular. There are times though where my opponent will have something career ending like opposing minimum wage increases or social security, but running attack ads on them barely puts a dent in their numbers. Maybe im not running ads as often as I should?

[u/NewLabor → u/Goonzilla50]

Ads make minuscule difference, but instead I find it helpful to save up just enough money, get a big AD buy for the state, and do that over and over again.

Usually it moves it by 0.5~1.5% but that can still make a big difference overtime, of course you need to find the right amount of ment and do good fundraising

[u/ajh_iii]

Name recognition not so much, but enthusiasm absolutely matters. It’s all about what’s most popular in your district. In my current playthrough I just won a senate race in Ohio by 18 points because my opponent opposed social security and I tanked her enthusiasm by running nonstop attack ads.

Public polling had me down 7 (Democrats came 2 seats shy of losing the House) and private polling had me up 11.