2) If you are in a lot of wars, you will end up with a large percentage of Pro-Military pops. As a result, the winning party from elections in both upper and lower hoses is likely to have a Pro Military stance.
This is worth taking note of by any player running a democracy. If you spend significant time at war, Pro-military and Jingoism will determine all your elections. Depending on what you are doing at war, Pro-military will probably be most important, but you can also sit at war while not adding war goals to beef up Jingoism.
What this means is that you can really screw yourself in the lower house if you want a party in power at some point that is NOT Pro-military or Jingoistic. My last game as the USA had a single party in power from the Civil War on because of my wars. I simply could not get anyone else elected because all my wars were successful and I had no war exhaustion. I could have let my war exhaustion creep up in order generate support for anti-military, but that seemed kind of gamey. After all, my people had every right to be supportive of a Pro-military policy, since it had paid off time and again. But I know now that if I need to shake up the ruling party, I might need to lay off the wars for a decade or so.
But it did lead to landslide elections... and really my population cared about nothing else than the military even before I went WC/infamy crazy. Another reason why election events don't matter especially for large empires.
Jimbo has a point here. Mathematically speaking, this game mechanic has the largest single impact on POP issues, even beyond the impact of demanding reform. I've seen up to 20% of the population demand a single reform one time, but I've seen 25% or more of the population be Pro-military or Jingoism multiple times. And it absolutely dwarfs the impact of election events.
See, the problem isn't that 50% of the entire population takes a military policy as its issue, with some people supporting the war and some people opposing it. The problem is that 20% of the population is pro-military, another 15% of the population is Jingoism, and no one else cares about the war(s). And they hold on to those views even while at peace for a considerable amount of time. Yes, there is decay, but winning a war that lasted for 5 years, while you had very little WE, means that for the next 10-20 years, elections will be decided by your people's support for that war.
What I would like to see instead is that POPs start supporting the military policy of the ruling party while at war and with low WE. If the war starts to turn bad, then they will switch issues to the opposite of the ruling party's military policy. So, let's say that Labor is in power in the UK and its 1870. I got to war with the USA and do well for two years. Labor is anti-military, so the POPs start supporting anti-military because the war is going well. Labor's military policy is successful, so POPs are supportive. But then the USA pulls off a brilliant operation and occupies Ireland. WE goes up and people get tired of the war. POP's start supporting Pro-military because Labor's military policy is clearly failing. If the UK can't end the war or start winning, POPs might get unhappy enough with Labor for Labor to lose the next election as POPs vote in a Pro-military party.
Another change that would be required is that the "cost" of adding war goals would have to be reworked. Under the system I propose, certain war goals would require certain issues to be in-play among your POPs. Annexing states might still require Jingoism, but now it would be harder to get support for that war goal if you do not have a party with that issue in power. On the other hand, Cut-Down-To-Size might require anti-military support among POPs, since it disarms an opponent, rather than takes their land. You would have to decide which war goals would cost which issue among your POPs so that certain ruling parties are encouraged to demand things more in-line with their policies.
I would also like to see this support for military policy decay much quicker than it does now. Support for military policies that comes from wars should have a half-life of 4 years, just long enough to let the ruling party that does well/does badly face an election. You should not be able to dictate the elections of your country for decades based on a few short wars.
This system would do several things.
1) POPs will get angry with parties that are in power when a country is doing badly in a war. As it stands now, an anti-military party in power GAINS support by letting WE climb with nothing to show for it. This is silly.
2) POPs will get happy with parties that in power when a country is doing well in war. As it stands now, a Pro-military party LOSES support during a war that is going well because POPs gain Jingoism. You would have to purchase war goals to get people to be Pro-military in order to keep people supportive of the ruling party. While this is what most players and the AI does, it is problematic. Simply doing well in the war is, right now, not good enough to help most ruling parties.
3) In democracies, spending a few years at war will no longer derail your elections for a decade. This might restore some sanity to elections.