Chapter 13: Elections, flow charts, and the joys of petty revenge
April 19, 1907: If you have significant colonial populations, you'll get this very nice event from time to time.
Granted, Pago Pago is hardly a crucial colony for Japan, but I'll not object to free prestige.
August 21, 1907: It's official; we're a Prussian Constitutionalist Government!
While there are many types of governments in AHD, I'm going to reduce them to five types.
Single party dictatorships: Only caused by revolutions or assigned at game start, there is one government for every party. (Proletarian Dictatorship, Presidential Dictatorship, etc.) There are no elections; to get out of it, add any kind of voting.
Absolute monarchy: No elections. Ruling parties can be Liberal, Conservative, or Reactionary. To get out, add any kind of voting.
Prussian Constitutionalism: Elections. You can switch Ruling Parties even after the election, but with a penalty to MIL. Ruling parties can be Liberal, Conservative, Reactionary, or Socialist. To go up a step, add Non-Secret Ballots.
HM's Government: Elections. I think the penalty to MIL is heftier for switching RPs, but I'm not certain. All parties can be ruling parties.
Democracy: Elections. Cannot switch ruling parties. Only caused by Jacobin revolutions or assigned at game start (or transition from Presidential Dictatorship).
The player can move freely, with some restrictions, between Absolute Monarchy, Prussian Constitutionalism, and HM's Government, as you can tell. I usually try to work towards HM's Government, in case I want to put Anarcho-Liberals in power.
August 27, 1907: Elections are officially announced! Let's take a look at our country as a whole to try to get a rough gauge of how they'll vote.
Remember, look at Voters' Ideologies, not Peoples' Ideologies, since not everyone can vote.
It's time for the section of this tutorial you've probably been waiting for: how to predict elections.
Elections
Before you can even start to worry about who is voting how, you have to get some critical information. First, you have to know your ruling party's Citizenship Policy. Under Residency, only Primary Culture POPs can vote. Under Limited Citizenship, Primary and Accepted Culture POPs can vote. Under Full Citizenship, everyone can vote (unless you're in a colony.) We're Limited Citizenship, so Japanese and Ainu can vote. Second, you have to know your Vote Franchise. We're Only Landed, so only Aristocrats and Capitalists get to vote. Third, you have to know your Voting System; since we're Jefferson Method, we'll have more than two significant parties, but probably no more than four or five. Got all that?
Good. Now, let's take a look at how the engine thinks my people will vote.
If the election ended today (and it won't), this is how they'd vote. If everybody could vote, that is, since I have all POPs selected. But you need more than that, since election events will occur and people's minds can change over the six months. How, exactly do POPs vote? Let me show you, through the glory of a flow chart!
If you want a copy of the flow chart, click on the image. It's in .docx format.
When POPs are voting for a particular ruling party, they ALWAYS base their decision on their most important issue, either directly or indirectly. The flow chart introduces a new concept in AHD: Party Loyalty. If a POP votes for the same party over and over again, it will tend to keep a POP voting for said party. If they feel really strongly about an issue, they'll ignore loyalty, but in most cases they won't. So, let's run an example through the flowchart.
It looks like this POP has two dominant issues, but Free Trade comes first (both alphabetically and because the GUI only gives you one decimal place). There are parties with Free Trade as a policy, so they have legitimate options. Both the Liberals and Radicals have Free Trade, and the POP has no particular loyalty to one party or another, since we haven't voted before. Therefore, he'll vote for the party with Free Trade who has the closest ideology to his, i.e. the Liberal Faction. Make sense? Let's try another.
Normally, these guys couldn't vote, since they're Laborers, but it'll give us practice. It'll be the exact same vote -- for the Liberals -- because Laissez Faire is the biggest concern for this POP. It's the same two parties, so it'll go by ideology.
Got all that? If you want to know how a POP will vote at any given time, grab the flow chart and run through it. If you want to be super anal-retentive, you could theoretically do this for every POP and get an accurate idea of how your voting will turn out. After all the votes are counted, the "ruling party" bonus is added to the ruling party (via the Political Parties reform) and you get your election results. Of course, it's very rare that 100% of a POP will vote for one party, so you have to do this for each issue to get a more exact understanding. POPs aren't homogeneous, after all, but it's still a good rule of thumb to find out, in general, how an election will go.
There's one more related matter I'd like to address: ideological drift. As you can tell, most POPs end up voting for the lower house based on ideology. Every POP starts with a base ideology or ideologies, grouped as follows:
Conservatives: Aristocrats (factor 10), Officers (factor 10), Soldiers (factor 10) Farmers (factor 5)
Conservative, Fascist, Reactionary: Artisans (factor 5)
Conservative, Liberal, Socialist: Bureaucrats (factor 1.5)
Liberal: Clerks (factor 10)
No particular ideology: Capitalists, Clergy, Craftsmen, Laborers
Certain things can cause a POP's preferred ideology to shift over time, though. Let's say I want Capitalists to favor Socialism. If you check under Victoria II\poptypes\capitalists and scroll down a bit, here's what you find for Socialists.
Code:
socialist = {
factor = 1
modifier = {
factor = 2
NOT = { life_needs = 0.7 }
}
modifier = {
factor = 1.1
nationalvalue = nv_equality
NOT = { ruling_party_ideology = communist }
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.05
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.10
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.15
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.20
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.25
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.30
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.35
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.40
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.45
}
modifier = {
factor = 5
NOT = {militancy = 6 }
social_reform_want = 0.50
}
modifier = {
factor = 3
poor_strata_militancy = 5
middle_strata_militancy = 5
}
modifier = {
factor = 3
poor_strata_militancy = 6
middle_strata_militancy = 6
}
modifier = {
factor = 3
poor_strata_militancy = 7
middle_strata_militancy = 7
}
modifier = {
factor = 3
poor_strata_militancy = 8
middle_strata_militancy = 8
}
}
We can increase the Capitalist drift to Socialism by increasing their desire for social reforms, having a very angry poor and middle class (but not angry capitalists), starving them, not being Communist, and having a national value of Equality. Now, this just increases the factor of the shift, and these same things could also pull them in different directions as well. For now, be aware of it, but don't worry too much about it.
There's one other way you can affect the progress of elections. Election events. We'll get to those in a bit; let's resume the AAR for now.
September 12, 1907: Here's our first election event.
We can learn some useful things here, even though the ultimate choice here is all but meaningless.
1. How important is this state to our election? It's 21.09% of the population, so the way Edo votes will be extremely important how the rest of our populace votes.
2. Which option is preferred? Free trade, obviously.
3. Which party is favored at the moment? The Marxists, surprisingly. There must be some other issue that's driving that, since the Marxists are Protectionist.
Here's what it
doesn't tell us: how important Free Trade or Protectionism is as an issue; my conclusion is not very. If 100% of people in Edo want free trade but are still voting socialist, that's a red flag (pun intended) that something else is at hand here. I don't know what, but it's something. I chose the last option, which will make the Protectionists more militant (and thus more likely to make Protectionism their #1 issue).
(If you want to know why, it's because the dominant issue for Capitalists in Edo is the 14 hour workday, and so they're voting Socialist as the party most likely to give them that. They're balanced out by Interventionist aristocrats.)
October 3, 1907: Our second election event (and the last I'll talk about).
Liberalism is winning the day here, yet only .01% of people in Aomori care about Laissez-Faire. I'll boost that by pushing for the first idea; it'll make people who want Planned Economy more militant, but at a 30% boost (that affects all POPs, so it won't quite be that big a boost). Of course, again, there's something more subtle here -- of that .01% who want Laissez Faire, 99% of them are aristocrats, who can vote.
November 3, 1907: We finish Advanced Naval Design and start Interchangeable Parts; I'm doing this largely for the Machine Parts invention, since a surprising number of countries don't make them yet.
December 13, 1907: Colonial Incident on Portugal, who is allied to France, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Netherlands. Pass.
January 1, 1908: This is unusual; a reform in the middle of an election. I really want to make elections as interesting as possible, so let's increase political reform awareness.
I'm not sure how much of an effect we'll have on this particular election, but it'll matter for future elections.
February 22, 1908: Here are our election results.
If you're confused (after all, the most recent check of the electorate vote says it should be 61.4% liberal), remember: only the rich can vote. In other words, Capitalists and Aristocrats. The liberals are still the biggest party (by far), so they'll win. We need to talk about one more election related thing: coalitions. The following groups will join coalitions with one another.
Liberals and Anarcho-Liberals
Conservatives and Reactionaries
Socialists and Communists
Fascists will never join a coalition.
According to the manual, if MIL is really high, you won't get any coalitions, but I've never seen an election end with no coalitions.
May 9, 1908: Next tech is Steel Railroad. By not buying Steamer Convoys, I'm maintaining a positive balance, but if somebody declared war on me tomorrow, I'd be in a lot of trouble.
December 18, 1908: We go to the Fourth Olympic Games.
January 1, 1909: In the interest of scientific accuracy, I'm going to introduce Harassment (rather than Only Underground) so that the magical ruling party support is lessened.
March 28, 1909: What's this, UK? Not paying attention to Siam? Good! I'll take them out of your sphere.
May 13, 1909: To improve our naval bases, I start researching Blue and Brown Water Schools.
July 22, 1909: I start influencing the Chinese Empire (very belatedly) to try to kick out the Russians, so that if I fight China, I fight them alone.
September 9, 1909: Sweden is a great power! (Sorry, Spain.)
April 13, 1910: I've been focusing a lot on the navy; it's time to show the army some love. My next five year plan (if it's been five years) is to work towards Tanks. We start with Strategic Mobility.
August 25, 1910: Next is Point Defense System.
September 1, 1910: Colonial Incident on France. This game really hates me.
October 17, 1910: The Chinese and I are now Cordial. Maybe I should try to add them to my sphere...
October 28, 1910: Crap.
If I were going to play this game again, I would have been much aggressive at trying to throw the Russians out of China. I have no excuse; I just completely forgot. This does get the Russians out of China, but a westernized China will be more tricky than one that isn't. Oh well. Guangxi is eaten by China, but Korea remains my loyal sphereling.
April 5, 1911: On to Deep Defense System.
May 11, 1911: The Chinese want to be allies! I'll sign for now, perhaps build a coalition to take down the Russians!
August 8, 1911: Gran Colombia "forms" by revolting from Venezuela.
September 11, 1911: What a shame: UK and Siam aren't friendly any more.
October 8, 1911: I go to the Fifth Olympic Games; we'd better win this time!
October 13, 1911: I begin manufacturing a CB against Siam. Where's your precious friends now, Siam?
October 23, 1911: In anticipation for war, I start buying Steamer Convoys again. I go from +£1922.3 a day to -£147.4 a day.
December 11, 1911: Siam and the UK are now neutral. Serves 'em right.
February 26, 1912: Our second election begins.
March 2, 1912: This maximum work hours movement would be much scarier if, you know, more than 22,000 people supported it. They are making 14 hour workday the biggest issue among voters.
March 15, 1912: Osaka, my largest state, is solidly Free Trade, ensuring their liberalness. Very reassuring.
April 4, 1912: "Place in the Sun" fires again; free prestige FTW!
April 7, 1912: We begin the last tech for Tanks: Infiltration.
May 3, 1912: China and I are Friendly now. They're a Secondary Power (#15 in the world).
May 17, 1912: Russia declares war on NGF. I could easily have declared war on them now, except I won't remember Japan has a free CB on Russia until much later.
May 28, 1912: A lockout?! In Tonga?! I'd be terrified if Tonga had any factories or could vote, but they can't, since, you know, they're still colonies.
May 31, 1912: The Boxers revolt!
All Great Powers get this CB on China; it's Cut Down to Size, essentially. I'm going to cautiously wait and see who, if anybody, takes advantage of this.
June 7, 1912: Korea just now offers me an Alliance. At least I have one friend in the fight against China!
August 11, 1912: I'm seriously thinking of war with China at this point, although the other GPs have been disturbingly silent. I throw another 23 guards into the queue.
August 20, 1912: I declare war on Siam.
To be honest, this would have been my best opportunity to grab some chunks out of China, but getting 50 war score against China is hardly easy. If somebody like France or Russia jumped on China, I would have too. Don't worry, though: I'll be at war with China soon enough. You'll have to settle for Siam at the moment.
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Before I formally close this update, I'd like to address a very common question about elections: how do I engineer them to get what I want? The short answer is, you can't. You can "undo" the mistakes of your people by appointing a new RP, unless you're a democracy. You'll get a MIL hit (the longer you wait after the election, the less it will be), but it'll go away. You do have a few options to at least influence your people.
1. Use the Party Loyalty NF. It takes a long time to work right, but it's the only sure fire way of getting people to ignore their ideologies. Remember, it almost never comes down strictly to issue.
2. Choose your electoral events wisely. Sometimes this means choosing the opposite of the policy you want, because MIL will push that particular issue higher in the POP's minds.
3. If you're really desperate, tear apart the poptypes files and find out how to shift their ideology in the direction you want. It's not easy, and you have to take a lot of things into account, but it can be done.
4. Use political reforms to get the part of the electorate you want voting. If you want a liberal RP, you generally want the most excitable people in charge, which means keeping the poor from voting. Farmers and Soldiers are almost invariably Conservative. Capitalists change their ideologies at the drop of a hat, on the other hand.
5. If you want to be really subtle (and you don't want Conservatives in charge), you have to get Farmers to promote to a POP other than Soldiers, so do everything you can to make them Craftsmen. That means increasing literacy, first and foremost.
6. Suppress movements to make people that support them more militant, so they'll ignore ideology and vote for issues instead. Remember, people that want a political reform always vote Liberal; people that want a social reform always vote Socialist.
Those are just a few suggestions; perhaps your fellow readers have more. Until next time!