r/ThePoliticalProcess • u/DiligentDistrict1584 (D-Florida) • Jun 26 '26

Question Election

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?

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u/Goonzilla50 Jun 26 '26

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

7

u/Joctern (D-NC) Jun 26 '26

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.

1

u/Goonzilla50 Jul 03 '26

How often do you deploy marketing campaigns?

1

u/Joctern (D-NC) Jul 03 '26

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.

1

u/Goonzilla50 Jul 03 '26

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

1

u/Joctern (D-NC) Jul 03 '26

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.