Election Mechanics

Elections in A House Divided run perpetually. Every office has continuous cycles: a cycle resolves, the next one spawns immediately, seats never sit vacant. This page is the top-level reference for how elections work — phases, timing, scoring, vote math. Deep dives for primaries, generals, and country-specific rules get their own pages.

The Two Phases

Every election has two phases:

1. Primary phase — intra-party competition. Candidates from the same party compete for one nomination slot. Resolution uses a primary score (no votes accumulate). Highest score per party advances.
2. General phase — inter-party competition. Nominees from different parties compete. Votes accumulate turn by turn; the final 4 turns land 25% of the pool.

When the general resolves, winners take office and the next cycle spawns.

Duration by Race Type (US)

All durations are in real hours = game weeks.

Senate classes are staggered: Class 1 → Class 2 (+96h) → Class 3 (+192h), so one-third of the Senate is up every ~4 real days.

UK, DE, and JP use different cycle lengths — see each country hub for specifics.

The Primary Score (State Races)

Primary scores go up to 100 points in three buckets:

Manhattan distance on the two-axis grid (econ + social) drives alignment. Each point of distance costs you 2 alignment points.

NPP candidates get a 50% primary-score multiplier when at least one player is in the same party's primary — a 50-point NPP lands at 25, which makes competent player candidates heavy favorites.

The Primary Score (Presidential)

Presidential primaries use a different blend — national reach and party infrastructure matter more than state favorability:

So presidential primaries reward NPI accumulation and home-state party-org investment, where state primaries reward favorability and in-state political influence.

Vote Accumulation (General)

During the general phase, votes accumulate each turn via the Total Appeal Pipeline (also used by polling and NPP dropout calculations).

Per-turn weighting

• Early turns: 0.75 × totalPool / (totalTurns − 4) per turn.
• Final 4 turns: 0.25 × totalPool / 4 per turn.

In other words, the last 4 turns are worth ~25% of the entire election. If you're within 3% going into the last day, every campaign and ad action in those 4 turns compounds into the heaviest-weighted snapshots.

The Total Appeal Pipeline

For each demographic group, for each candidate, per turn:

1. Reach — normalizeNPI(influence). State races use Political Influence (caps at 1.0 when PI=100). Presidential races use NPI (logarithmic, can exceed 1.0).
2. Appeal (per group) — (50 − |econDiff|×5 − |socialDiff|×5)² / 100 + normalizeNPI(influence) × 25. Quadratic position scoring. Max 50 at standard NPI=100; up to 75 with very high NPI in presidential races.
3. Approval scalar — favorability / 100. 0% favorability = 0 votes.
4. Party org scalar — 0.5 + (statePartyOrg / 100) × 0.5. Ranges 0.5× to 1.0×. Independents use 1.0.
5. Turn pool scaled by party strength modifier: (1 + stateGovernmentApproval) × officeStrength.
6. Group-level allocation — Each group contributes to the turn pool proportional to its size. Within each group, candidates split that contribution by relative (appeal × reach × approval × partyOrg).
7. Votes summed across all groups. That's your turn total.

Office strength multipliers:

• Governor: 1.0
• State Senate: 0.85
• House: 0.9
• Senate: 0.8

Governor races are most affected by state government approval; Senate races least.

FPTP vs RCV — The Spoiler Effect

Most states use First Past the Post (FPTP). A few run Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) — this is a state-level legislative choice.

In FPTP states, after the per-turn group allocation:

• For each third-party candidate, 10% × (their group-level votes) is drawn from the ideologically nearest major-party candidate and transferred to the third party.
• "Nearest" = Manhattan distance on the econ/social grid.
• Major parties are determined per region: Democrat/Republican in the US, Labour/Conservative in England, SNP/Labour in Scotland, etc.

This models real-world spoiler dynamics: a Green candidate bleeds Democratic votes, potentially handing the seat to the Republican.

In RCV states, no spoiler adjustment applies. Third parties compete on equal footing. Switching a state from FPTP to RCV requires legislation.

Multi-Seat Races

House and State Senate (US), Bundestag constituency seats, UK Commons regions, and JP Shūgiin use proportional allocation:

• Largest-remainder method distributes seats proportional to vote share.
• Minimum threshold: 20% of votes to be eligible for any seat (MULTI_SEAT_MIN_SHARE).
• 2-seat special case: winner takes both unless the runner-up reaches 20%.
• Seats estimate: updated each turn — voteFraction × totalSeats.

Candidacy Rules

• One race at a time. Active candidacies block new declarations (cancel first, then re-enter).
• Home state / region only. US home state, UK home region, DE home Land, JP home prefecture — except President, which is national.
• Party required for primaries. Independents run in the "independent" party primary (same rules as any other party). No general-phase bypass.
• Country restriction. Your countryId must match the election's countryId; cross-country entry returns 403.
• Primary deadline. Declarations close at primaryEndTime. Miss the window and you wait a full cycle.

Withdrawal

You can withdraw any time before the election resolves:

• Candidate status → withdrawn, withdrawnAt timestamped.
• Your votes are permanently removed from the tally (not redistributed).
• Your campaign document is deleted.
• You cannot re-enter the same election.

Withdrawal during a general you're losing is sometimes strategic — it frees actions for a better race next cycle. During a primary it's almost always wrong unless you're pivoting to a different office.

Perpetual Continuity

No seat sits vacant. Mechanics:

• House: Next cycle spawned immediately on resolution.
• Senate / Governor / State Senate: Perpetual check each turn; replacement spawned for any slot with no active/upcoming race.
• Governor bootstrap: If no state has ever completed a governor race, one is spawned per state so cycle 1 exists.
• President: Spawned on presidential election years (isPresidentialElectionYear(turn)).
• New elections inherit duration from the most recently completed equivalent race.

Presidential Election Specifics

• National race. Any home state can run.
• Electoral College (538 votes, 270 to win). ME and NE split by congressional district (UNIT_LEAN modifiers).
• Independent penalty: 0.3× vote share on the general path (70% reduction).
• Running mate (VP): After the primary, each nominee picks a VP. Cannot be the current President; cannot be the same person.
• Presidential Travel: Active candidates can travel to a US state during the general (5 actions). +1% Favorability per turn while in-state, one state at a time.
• Tie-breaker: 269–269 resolved by deterministic coin flip (hash of election ID + candidate IDs).

Polls vs Simulated Votes

• State races (House, Senate, Gov, State Senate, Commons, Bundestag, Sangiin, Shūgiin): player polls use the same group-level competitive allocation and FPTP spoiler rules as real vote accumulation. Poll numbers reflect the actual math.
• Presidential: simulated votes accumulate per electoral unit using a different model (party-weighted positions, steep party-org curve, state-lean, swing-state ground game, FPTP spoiler not applied). Player polls remain home-state projections only and should not be treated as Electoral College forecasts.

Related

• Primaries — Declaration rules, NPP dynamics, primary-phase tactics.
• General Elections — Vote accumulation, final-turn weighting, tie-breakers.
• Campaign Strategy — Tactical decision-making.
• Primary vs General Tactics — How to pivot between phases.
• Demographics & Targeting — Appeal math and group composition.
• Snap Elections — Parliamentary dissolution in UK and JP.
• Formula Deep-Dive — Every formula with derivations.