- Pronouns
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HEM Tiberius Frollo
Editor-in-Chief
With one week until polls open in Europeia, this election season's first voter opinion survey has revealed a deeply divided electorate in a race that is too close to call for now.
ENN surveyed 58 registered voters. Despite concerns of tampering, the age demographic of this poll almost perfectly matched ENN's Culture & Politics poll last month. No suspicious entries were found in the data.
58.7% of respondents said that they were happy with the choices they were given in this Presidential election cycle. 36.2% said that they wished more tickets were running, while 5.2% said they wished less candidates were vying Europeia's highest office.
When asked who they were currently favoring in the race, here's what they said:
When we broke down the data by age, we found a deep divide in Europeia's electorate. New members broke toward supporting Calvin Coolidge, while old members broke for Common-Sense Politics.
Calvin Coolidge's narrow lead with new members, however, does not come close to Common-Sense Politics' commanding lead with old members.
However, the devil is in the details. While on first glance CSP seems close to the finish line, he has his own challenges to overcome. These problems are why, despite his 20% lead, ENN is categorizing this race as "Too Close To Call."
Common Sense Politics' Voters
We asked CSP's voters two questions: how strongly do you support your candidate, and who would you vote for if your candidate were eliminated?
Here are their answers:
57.1% of CSP's voters indicate that they "might change their mind" in comparison to 42.9% who indicated that they were "definitely" going to vote for the incumbent Grand Admiral.
It's very unlikely that CSP would be eliminated in the first round, however, bad news for Kaboom in that he is not many CSP voters' second choice.
Calvin Coolidge's Voters
We asked Calvin's voters two questions: how strongly do you support your candidate, and who would you vote for if your candidate were eliminated?
Here are their answers:
Calvin has a much more loyal base than CSP, with 80% of his voters saying that they will "definitely" vote for him. Only 20% might change their mind.
In terms of the second round voting, this is a better number for Kaboom than what he got among CSP's voters, but he still needs to build on this. Kaboom's narrow path to the Presidency will almost certainly require Calvin Coolidge being eliminated, and most of his voters going to Kaboom. Right now he's only getting a third.
Kaboom's Voters
We asked Kaboom's voters two questions: how strongly do you support your candidate, and who would you vote for if your candidate were eliminated?
Here are their answers:
Kaboom also has a loyal voter base — though not as quite as loyal as Calvin's. Like Calvin, however, exactly 2/3rds of his voters say that their second choice is CSP.
Undecided Voters
We asked undecided voters this key question: If you *had* to say, who would you vote for?
Here are their answers:
Undecided voters actually mimic the results of those who specified a preference on the original question. Common-Sense Politics actually underperforms with undecided voters, while Kaboom and Calvin over perform a bit.
Summation
In this section, we'll briefly get inside the candidates heads to summarize some of the data here:
If you are CSP, what are you happy about?
If you are CSP, you are happy to be in the lead. You have a comfortable raw vote lead over both your opponents — and better yet — both those opponents voters' say you are their second choice.
You are also doing better with new members than people might suspect on first glance. This may be partially due to Cat's presence on the ticket.
If you are CSP, what is keeping you up at night?
If you're CSP, you're probably having night terror flashbacks from the election in April 2016 that featured a really familiar cast of candidates. You fought to a draw in the first round of voting, and then built up an early lead in the second round of voting, until Calvin fought his way back for the victory.
CSP's position here is a bit stronger, but he still doesn't have a majority of voters. Indeed, his own voter coalition is large, but shallow. A majority of his voters outrightly admit that they might end up voting for someone else.
If you are CSP, you are trying to figure out how to seal the deal with everyone who is already leaning toward you, and avoiding making any faux pas to send them into the arms of the other guys.
If you are Calvin, what are you happy about?
Firstly, you are happy that CSP hasn't snagged a majority of the vote. You are also pleased that your voter base is the most loyal of any of the candidates in the race.
You are extremely happy that the majority of CSP's supporters are "soft" and that a supermajority see you as the second best option. You are definitely wondering how you could nudge them into your column. If you can get even half of CSP's "might vote for someone else" voters, suddenly you win in round one.
If you are Calvin, what's keeping you up at night?
You know that you're drastically underperforming both your 2016 runs for the Presidency. CSP has a lot more roads to the Goldenblock than you do, and he has a lock on the old guard vote.
You want to peel back some of that support, which will probably require a renewed focus on foreign policy in your campaign. Getting a major party endorsement would help too.
If you are Kaboom, what are you happy about?
Not much. These poll results are pretty rough for Kaboom. Some of the early numbers looked more promising (at one point he was about even with Calvin), but starting from only 10% is rough.
If you're Kaboom, you are happy about how loyal your base is.
If you are Kaboom, what is keeping you up at night?
Besides the raw vote totals? You're definitely concerned about you're lackluster performance with new members and your underperformance as a "second choice."
At this point, I would bet cash that Kaboom cannot win on a first ballot. However, there is a very narrow path through a second ballot. However, it requires edging out Calvin and then getting most of his voters — none of those two things are true at the moment.
Kaboom has tried to distance himself slightly from the EPP, and that's probably been a mistaken. If Kaboom wants to inject life back into his campaign, he first needs to get the EPP endorsement. He then needs to rally together a strong coalition of new members that lets him claw his way past Calvin.
Part of Kaboom's strategy will depend on a faux pas or scandal from another candidate — maybe CSP losing his cool with someone, or people trying to make a campaign issue out of all of Calvin's negative newspaper articles over the last few months.
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Results on "Other Issues" including the Presidential Approval Rating will be released tomorrow
Results on "Other Issues" including the Presidential Approval Rating will be released tomorrow
Good luck, everyone! <3
