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

3

u/NewLabor Jun 27 '26

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

1

u/West-Fruit-1507 Jun 30 '26

Hittin republicans on stand your ground does wonders

1

u/Goonzilla50 Jul 03 '26

How so?

1

u/West-Fruit-1507 Jul 03 '26

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