November Presidential Exit Poll Results

[Calvin Coolidge]

On Saturday, November 4th, President Brunhilde and Vice President Rach took office. In an attempt to learn more about the events that led up to that, this poll was created. From November 5th to 7th, this poll was open in the Grand Hall, and accumulated 37 responses. Let's examine them.*

*I will not be including the graphs or discussing the Oak/DT responses, as the number was very low. They are included in this poll's raw data if you wish to see them, however.

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This poll broke down to have 17 Brunhilde/Rach voters, 18 Darcness/Sopo voters, and 2 Oakrugia/Dark Templar voters. Obviously, the polling sample here varies slightly from the election results, but I hope that problem is mitigated by the sectioning off of the different voter bases.

Brunhilde/Rach Voters

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The Brun voters who responded to this poll overwhelmingly feel they are active on the forum, yet only a 10-7 majority are active in the Executive government. Obviously, this is not a perfect measurement for activity overall, but shows a different kind of activity to consider when considering the type of voter the candidate attracts.

Darcness/Sopo Voters

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These results are pretty comparable to the Brun voters' responses, so, at least when it comes to those who responded to this poll, there is no significant difference in the number of active/inactive voters for either ticket, by either measure. Of course, this poll was not taken by many voters, so take this finding with a grain of salt.

Brunhilde/Rach Voters

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Despite the potential view that this ticket represented a variation from the status quo, the vast majority of respondents here were fine with the direction the region was heading.

Darcness/Sopo Voters

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Nearly double the respondents believed the region was not the right track pre-election compared to Brun's voters. Of course, the vast majority of both felt the region was on the right track, but these numbers are a little surprising considering the narrative of the race and the respective candidates.

Brunhilde/Rach Voters

Spoiler: What was the most important issue to you in this race?

• Leadership
• Culture
• Overall vision for the region.
• Foreign presence
• Ending the states program
• Foreign affairs.
• That candidates are proposing new ideas.
• Radio/Interior
• integration

Voters were really all over the map on their priorities, so it is tough to draw any conclusions from this data.

Darcness/Sopo Voters

Spoiler: What was the most important issue to you in this race?

• Newcomer integration
• Foreign Affairs
• The quality of the specific people on the tickets and the overall broad vision of the candidates
• Interior
• Electing leaders for Vice President who inspire and promote good leadership qualities.
• Electing a President who understands the whole of Government and not just one facet, and one who doesn't just pander by changing their platform mid election.
• Domestic/Integration
• Radio and foreign outreach
• new citizen engagement

While there is also a spread here, there is more common response relating to Interior and the strength of the candidates' leadership.

Brunhilde/Rach Voters

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Spoiler: If so, could you describe the experience?

• I never was. No one gave me a hard sell, probably assumed I was pro-Brun and didn't bother. Sopo jokingly tried to convince me to vote Darc, but I never felt pressured.

Counter to the narrative surrounding this election, it appears most respondents here did not encounter any campaigning that made them feel uncomfortable, and the few that did were unwilling to share their feelings, which is, of course, their right.

Darcness/Sopo Voters

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Spoiler: If so, could you describe the experience?

• I would prefer not to
• A candidate said the election showed who real friends were
• It's uncomfortable to only be spoken to when someone wants something when prior to this they either didn't give you the time of day or spend their time making disparaging comments about you.
• There was just too much drama going on, with the whole JayDee thing and several inexperienced newcomer tickets. I was not personally approached but I'm just happy the election is over.
• I was contacted and made to feel guilty, along with other things I am not comfortable mentioning...
• There was a lot of campaigning over Discord, and there were incidents in which I heard that one candidate used emotions or guilt to unfairly gain a vote.
• rach pushed for me to break party lines and support her over drac
• I was guilted by the opposing ticket, and told that our friendship depended on my vote.

Okay, here is some variation. Darcness voters, it seems were pretty uncomfortable with the way campaigning was done by the other ticket in the race, with many describing circumstances where they were made to feel guilty, and as if their friendship was on the line in this election. This is a little upsetting to see, but perhaps more surprising that while the majority of Darcness respondents felt this way, it hardly happened at all to our Brunhilde respondents, meaning the targeting was pretty much one-way, if this data is correct. I hope that this data was able to bring light to this troubling occurrence in a way that resolves the issue through discussion.

Brunhilde/Rach Voters

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One of the most-talked issues of the election was the conduct by former Minister of Communications and Vice Presidential candidate JayDee regarding the deletion of EBC poll data, and the fallout from that. He resigned from the ticket and the Ministry, and posted a resignation from his Justice position, then retracted it. Voters from the ticket he was once on are fairly forgiving of JayDee, with the majority only being in favor of his resignation from the Presidential ticket, though not forgiving enough to say that there should have been no consequence.

Darcness/Sopo Voters

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Here, the respondents are less forgiving, with the majority approving of both JayDee's resignation from the Presidential ticket and the Ministry of Communications. Respondents here were slightly more likely to wish for a Judicial resignation, but neither ticket has that strong of a support for it.

Brunhilde/Rach Voters

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One of the claims by JayDee during his Grand Hall post entitled "A lot of things" was that he once believe Europeia to be a meritocracy, but after the course of this election he no longer believed that was the case. Curious to see what the general public believed, I asked this question. While the majority of Brun respondents disagree with JayDee, the margin is close enough that there is clearly a large number of citizens who agree with that sentiment.

Darcness/Sopo

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The responses here are rather similar to the Brun respondents, which perhaps might speak more to the general identity of Europeia, which is in question equally by both camps, and is something that will likely be discussed more as time goes on and events play out.

Brunhilde/Rach Voters

Spoiler: Final Comments

• Some people work hard and barely get noticed. Others barely do anything, but get all of the recognition and credit.
• JayDee was right in withdrawing his VP candidacy, but there was no need to resign as MinComm. That being said, since he did, he should have gone ahead and resigned everything if he felt his judgement was compromised enough to resign one position.
• This election had two strong candidates but they both had seriously flawed platforms and made poor VP choices.
• Europeia is not a meritocracy because it's a democracy. We don't have an examination board that decides who gets government offices. Personal merit is part of the equation, but so are ideas and bedside manner (or popularity, if you prefer) and, you know, politics.
• Abolish the government.
• The JayDee question is out of place on this poll, and I feel like it's going to be used to apply pressure to a situation that should be allowed to lay; JayDee has already owned up to and faced the consequences of his actions, Calvin's continual efforts to attack and push out a promising up and coming Europeian should be looked at firmly and with a hard eye.

Darcness/Sopo Voters

Spoiler: Final Comments

• It still feels meritocratic right now, yes.
• I don't know that a meritocracy os a bad thing. You do the work well and you get the rewards of your work. When you're rewarded and didn't put in the work, that shows something a bit broken in the system.
• Less of an meritocracy due to the results of this election. It's discord spamming.
• Something is wrong in Europeia

Thank you to all respondents of this poll, I really appreciate your participation, and the data we gathered from it. I hope this helped shine some light on this election, and provides some context for our discussions going forward. Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, holding his head in his hands.

Raw Data

 

[JayDee]

Can't say I'm surprised by these results.

 

[GraVandius]

I think this poll shows that there was a shift in the more active members of the community to a more even split following Aex's poll. This would still suggest that it was the more inactive members that gave Brun and Rach the edge.

So both the narratives of the administration and it's critics are correct?

 

[JayDee]

If you read the poll, it seems to show that more inactive members voted for Darcness than Brunhilde. Might just be that more people who voted for Brun took this poll.

I must say I find it quite suspicious that this got only 37 responses while Aex's polls got 45.

 

[Sopo]

If you read the poll, it seems to show that more inactive members voted for Darcness than Brunhilde. Might just be that more people who voted for Brun took this poll.

I must say I find it quite suspicious that this got only 37 responses while Aex's polls got 45.

People care a lot less after the fact.

I think Aex also sent the poll around on Discord to try to hit as many people as possible, and I'm not sure Cal did that.

Overall, the most surprising thing about this poll is that it didn't settle or reveal much of anything. Even for the question about feeling pressured, only a few people shared firsthand experience of being pressured. That shouldn't be ignored, but it isn't enough to substantiate a wider trend.

 

[GraVandius]

If you read the poll, it seems to show that more inactive members voted for Darcness than Brunhilde. Might just be that more people who voted for Brun took this poll.

I must say I find it quite suspicious that this got only 37 responses while Aex's polls got 45.

Well it's true that 94% of Brun's voters consider themselves active while only 88.9% of Darc's voters consider themselves active. More of Darc's voters are AM's (61.1% to 58.8%) though which would suggest that they are more engaged in actuality. The actual difference here is really only one person though so it's not conclusive either way.

My point is not that the poll itself showed Darc's voters to be more active but based of the context of the election as a whole. In this poll both cannidates were tied in their votes. Most of the people who participated in this poll are active. This would subsequently sugest that the voters that put Brun over the edge would be people who did not take this poll, a la inactive people.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Interesting, but hardly conclusive of anything, at the end of the day. Though at least less lopsided than I thought it would be.

We need to have fucking mandatory poll taking so we can actually understand how shit is going in this region. It becomes impossible to project where the region is going when even among the active citizen base, tons of people aren't taking these bloody things. (#I'mnotactuallyseriousbutthisisaproblemofsorts)

 

[Skizzy Grey]

These poll results are good news for our community. Whatever divisions may exist in the region’s leadership aren’t mirrored in the broader population; Brun’s voters look basically the same as Darc’s (though the poll obviously didn’t measure less active and Discord-only members, and there’s little doubt Brun cleaned up among those groups).

It’s not surprising that Darc’s voters perceived Brun’s private appeals for votes differently than Brun’s voters did. This is also a reassuring finding: to the extent high-pressure tactics were used (and it isn’t clear that they were), those tactics plainly backfired.

 

[Aexnidaral]

I must say I find it quite suspicious that this got only 37 responses while Aex's polls got 45.

I specifically sent my poll to many members of the community I wasn't sure would take them, but saw them as quiet swing votes. Lots of people can attest to this. I don't know what you're trying to imply.

 

[JayDee]

I must say I find it quite suspicious that this got only 37 responses while Aex's polls got 45.

I specifically sent my poll to many members of the community I wasn't sure would take them, but saw them as quiet swing votes. Lots of people can attest to this. I don't know what you're trying to imply.

Fair enough

 

[Kylia Quilor]

I must say I find it quite suspicious that this got only 37 responses while Aex's polls got 45.

I specifically sent my poll to many members of the community I wasn't sure would take them, but saw them as quiet swing votes. Lots of people can attest to this. I don't know what you're trying to imply.

Fair enough

These numbers actually support the Brun-camp's notion of a lot of people swinging to her after she changed her platform or of people who hadn't taken Aex's poll, in the sense that the numbers are far less lopsided pro-Darc/Sopo this time around.

 

[JayDee]

I must say I find it quite suspicious that this got only 37 responses while Aex's polls got 45.

I specifically sent my poll to many members of the community I wasn't sure would take them, but saw them as quiet swing votes. Lots of people can attest to this. I don't know what you're trying to imply.

Fair enough

These numbers actually support the Brun-camp's notion of a lot of people swinging to her after she changed her platform or of people who hadn't taken Aex's poll, in the sense that the numbers are far less lopsided pro-Darc/Sopo this time around.

The numbers definitely support that assumption, and I wasn't denying it before if that wasn't clear. My disagreement with you is that this will become a large problem in the future, but I do agree that it happened this election.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

My point being, why would you have any issue with what this poll had to say?

 

[JayDee]

Well, I do have a problem with the clear bias of Darcness supporters regarding my actions. At this point, it's just petty. It's over, I'm not resigning any of my other positions, and I've paid my dues. I honestly don't see the need to bring it up in this poll other than to try and put pressure on me.

 

[Rach]

This would subsequently sugest that the voters that put Brun over the edge would be people who did not take this poll, a la inactive people.

I generally do not take polls and i can name several other people who don't either

 

[XIV]

This would subsequently sugest that the voters that put Brun over the edge would be people who did not take this poll, a la inactive people.

I generally do not take polls and i can name several other people who don't either

I try to take polls but there are a lot of them.

 

[Sopo]

Well, I do have a problem with the clear bias of Darcness supporters regarding my actions. At this point, it's just petty. It's over, I'm not resigning any of my other positions, and I've paid my dues. I honestly don't see the need to bring it up in this poll other than to try and put pressure on me.

It was a big part of the election's narrative, and I think it was fair to ask. If anything, you should feel vindicated that a majority of people don't want you to resign from the Court.

 

[Steven G. Eastridge]

I'm disappointed that Oak's voter responses aren't presented. Sure, it's a small sample size, and granted probably a lot of people don't care, but that is still data points of people who took the poll. From what I'm gathering, those who are actually active took the poll, so I'm assuming actually active people voted for Oak if they took this poll. Making individuals dig through raw data to find those responses is more challenging than presenting it in the writeup.

 

[Skizzy Grey]

This would subsequently sugest that the voters that put Brun over the edge would be people who did not take this poll, a la inactive people.

I generally do not take polls and i can name several other people who don't either

Neither do I. But I do think it’s fair to presume that people who participate in polls such as this one are, as a group, more active in the community than people who choose not to participate. I think our history has generally borne this out, as the candidate who draws support disproportionately from less active citizens (either because he/she reaches out to them as Brun did, or because he/she is running against a relative newcomer whom less active citizens are less likely to know well) generally outperforms his/her poll numbers.