Upper House Composition

[Chamboozer]

How is the upper house's composition determined? I figured that if I set it to two-per-state then upper house seats would be awarded to whoever wins the most local elections on a state-by-state basis, but this doesn't seem to be the case. No matter the outcome of the state elections my upper house still matches almost identically the population's ideologies.

How do the different settings for the upper house impact its composition?

I thought I might get a clue by looking at the election events that show part support within a state. Every election seems to depict the two highest-rated parties as splitting the whole vote between them, but I can't seem to figure out how that's determined either or what it's meant to represent (I've got two-per-state and FPTP). Sometimes the split is wildly different when the two parties have an almost identical percentage of popular support on the population tab, and sometimes it's almost identical in the election events when they have unbalanced support in the population tab. Can't figure it out.

Anyone out there who understands this?

 

[gdj]

Frankly, im puzzled at this as well.

I remember one peculiar case where the logic of two per state seemed impenetrable:

I started as Serbia (yes, i like it challenging), and had through a series of lucky (and rare) events the opportunity to pass reforms even before i expanded at all (it was around 1838). So i enacted landed voting and two per state.

Since my nation had at this time only one state, i figured that the upper house would either be 100% conservative (2 cons. senators), a 50/50 split between conservatives and liberals (1 lib, 1 cons senator), or possibly but unlikely a 50/50 split between conservatives and reactionaries. After all 2 per state in a 1 state nation shouldnt give you more than 2 senators, right?

Wrong.

What i got in Jan 1839 was something like 60% conservative, 27% liberal and 13% reactionary.

i have no reasonable explanation how this could be possible. Does anyone?

Edit: typos

 

[Chamboozer]

Well that at least is explainable by saying that two-per-state doesn't literally mean two representatives, but that each state is balanced in representation with the others, rather than being weighted by population. In a one-state country, population and two-per-state should be identical since there's only one state to measure anyway.

But that doesn't explain how the party that wins the FPTP vote in half of my states, and thus the election, still comes away with only 10% of the upper house.

 

[General WVPM]

Maybe Paradox is trolling us with incorrect info and they mean 2 per PROVINCE
serbia:
4 provinces
4* 2 = 8 senators
60% ≈ 5/8
27% ≈ 2/8
13% ≈ 1/8

 

[gdj]

Maybe Paradox is trolling us with incorrect info and they mean 2 per PROVINCE
serbia:
4 provinces
4* 2 = 8 senators
60% ≈ 5/8
27% ≈ 2/8
13% ≈ 1/8

Hmm, never thought of that. But the math seems to work out...and 2 per province is not bad either, provided that the player knows its per province and not per state..

 

[pesgores]

The "Two per State" reform means every state has the same weight when determining the composition of the UH. For example, if your country has 3 states, one with 500k people, another with 100k and the third one with 10k people, when your UH is being recomposed, the game calculates the average ideology of all those 3 states, regardless of population. So, if your smaller state is a huge Reactionary bastion (say, 50% of POPs have that ideology) and your other states have 10% each, the average would be 23,33...%, thus making it so your UH has that much representation of Reactionaries, even though only about 10% of your people follow that ideology.

 

[Chamboozer]

The "Two per State" reform means every state has the same weight when determining the composition of the UH. For example, if your country has 3 states, one with 500k people, another with 100k and the third one with 10k people, when your UH is being recomposed, the game calculates the average ideology of all those 3 states, regardless of population. So, if your smaller state is a huge Reactionary bastion (say, 50% of POPs have that ideology) and your other states have 10% each, the average would be 23,33...%, thus making it so your UH has that much representation of Reactionaries, even though only about 10% of your people follow that ideology.

So here you're saying ideology. Is that the problem with my understanding? Is the upper house determined from pop ideologies and not from party vote? If I have 10% reactionary pops but 50% of my pops are voting for the reactionary party, am I still going to get a 10% reactionary upper house?

 

[pesgores]

So here you're saying ideology. Is that the problem with my understanding? Is the upper house determined from pop ideologies and not from party vote? If I have 10% reactionary pops but 50% of my pops are voting for the reactionary party, am I still going to get a 10% reactionary upper house?

Yes, it is ideology that counts when calculating the UH. Party vote only counts towards governmental election results.

 

[General WVPM]

Did some test, description is partially correct.
The mechanic works per state, not per province.
But there are no such things as 2 senators per state, it just works with the %'s of the people's ideologies.

Example:
State 1

• population: 120 K
• conservative: 40%
• liberal: 60%

State 2

• population 20 K
• conservative 80%
• liberal 20%

Result:

• conservative = (40% + 80%)/2 = 60%
• liberal = (60% + 20%)/2 = 40%

If you would go by population based, the result would be:

• conservative = ((40% x 120 K) + (80% x 20 K))/(120 K + 20 K) = 64/140 ≈ 45.7%
• liberal = ((60% x 120 K) + (20% x 20 K))/(120 K + 20 K) = 76/140 ≈ 54.3%

For most European countries this doesn't really matter, but for countries like Russia and USA with largely empty provinces, this can make a huge difference.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Afaik the UH composition is determined like this:

Ruling Party Only -> 100% ideology of your current ruling party
Appointed -> UH composition is equal to the average ideology of all your rich strata
Two Per State -> The game calculates the average ideology from all strata for each state, then it sums up all these averages and divides them by the number of states to get the national average
Based on Population -> UH composition is equal to the average ideology from all strata+

The bigger the pop size (and ideology) differences within your states, the stronger the impact of Two Per State on your UH.