Jokes cannot make up for inexperience and other tips to win elections

What voters expect from a congress member and what wins their vote in a campaign, turn out to be two very, very different things, according to a survey and a candidate analysis that I conducted in February. Below, I will share some must-know background information as well as three lessons for aspiring politicians who hope to be elected for congress! Good luck to you! <3

After the presidential and congressional elections in February, I conducted a representative voter survey among voters in the Netherlands to figure out why they voted for their presidential and congressional candidate (the largest elections in the game at that time). I also made an analysis of all 48 congress candidates’ campaigns, such as their experience, campaign styles and election plans. The results turned out to be an absolute gold mine of data for aspiring politicians, not only in the Netherlands but worldwide.

For all the aspiring politicians who are going to run for congress tomorrow, I have conducted an additional analysis of the data, which led to three ‘lessons’ that I think are universally applicable to elections across the globe. And for those of us who are gifted with a short attention span (hi comrades), I have summarized them in a spooky yet family friendly picture.

The pictures are the only AI-generated parts of this publication. Collecting, analysing and interpreting all the data was verrry time and energy consuming, so a like, tip and/or subscription would be much appreciated, as well as sharing the article and commenting what you thought of it! <3

Before we dive into the three lessons, let’s first have a quick look at what voters are looking for in a congress member.

0. What are voters looking for in a congress member?

In my survey, I asked participants to rank the importance of ten traits for a congress member. Participants ranked these traits from 1 (very unimportant) to 7 (very important). I have summarized the average outcomes in the table below and have (for the sake of clarity) subtracted the average score of 4 (exactly between 1 and 7). For example: an outcome of +0.40 means that participants gave that trait an average of 4.40 out of 7 points, meaning they thought it was ‘a little bit important’.

The only qualities that players appear to find very important in a congress member are that they take the game seriously (+1.96) and are online often (+1.91). Voters also appreciate a congress candidate who presents a clear campaign plan (+0.64), takes voters’ input (+0.58) and who tries to represent young players (+0.56), but none of these traits appear to be decisive reasons for them to vote for a candidate.

The only quality that players seem to find distinctly unimportant in a congress member is whether that person is funny. Participants gave that trait a score of -0.98. To be clear: that does not mean that players think a congress member should not be funny, but it does mean that they don’t consider it an important quality for a congress member.

Voters find it distinctly unimportant
whether a congress member is funny

In the image above, you see two columns. The first column shows the average ranking by all participants, the second column only shows the average ranking by players who had ran for congress themselves. Strikingly, participants who had been a congress candidate in the past had ‘more extreme’ views about what qualities a congress member should have. They found it even more important that a congress member takes the game seriously (+2.47) and is online a lot (+2.00). They also found it even more ‘unimportant’ that a candidate is funny: they gave that trait a score of -1.47.

We are already running into some very important nuances. Because what voters expect from a congress member is not necessarily the same as what they like to hear from you as an aspiring politician in your campaign. In fact, those two things turn out to be very, very different! Which leads us to the three lessons.

1. Voters don’t care about your novel

As said, I analysed all 48 candidates of the Dutch congress election of February. 18 seats were to be won in those elections and 166 players casted their vote. It’s important to know that in Dutch elections, congress candidates have two main ways of presenting their campaign plans: they can publish an article and/or they can share their plans in a designated campaign channel in the Dutch Discord server.

Of the 48 candidates in the Dutch February congress elections, 19 had shared their campaign plans in the Discord channel and in an article, 13 had only shared their candidature on Discord and 7 had only published an article. 9 candidates did neither publish something on Discord nor in-game.

Only 10 percent of candidates managed to win
voters’ hearts with their solid campaign plans

Of the 39 candidates who did present a campaign, 23 (59.0%) presented what I categorized as a ‘solid plan’: a well-thought-through campaign with ideas about what they think would make the country better, such as more transparency communication between the government and the people or new government roles. Surprisingly, of those 23 people, only 10 (43.5%) were elected, and the data suggests that half of them were not primarily elected because of their campaign but because they are experienced and/or well-known community members. In other words: only 5 out of 48 congress candidates (10.4%) seemed to have won voters’ hearts with their solid campaign plans.

I believe this shows that it is of little use to try to persuade players to vote for you by bombarding them with long campaign reads in which you detail every square inch of your plans. Put yourself in their perspective: would you be persuaded by someone who publishes long-ass articles, like the one you are reading now as if you have nothing better to do with your day? This is also reflected by the voter survey: while agreeing with a candidate’s plans was the most important reason participants mentioned for their vote, still only 14.9% of participants said agreeing with a candidate’s plan was an important reason for their vote as shown by the graph below.

Please note that personally, I do not consider the graph above very insightful/trustworthy because of the high percentage of candidates who voted for themselves (roughly a third). While participants could give multiple answers to the question below, I subtracted all other answers from candidates who had voted for themselves from the rest of the graph. As a result, this question yielded a small sample size. For completeness and transparency, I still wanted to share these results with you.

2. Sometimes, the best campaign is no campaign

So what are some of the things that Dutch congress candidates mentioned in their campaigns? Dutch congress candidates seem to be very keen on promising more ‘transparency’ and more and better ‘communication’ between the government and the people. Only 2 of the 48 Dutch congress candidates had a campaign that I categorized as ‘authoritarian’: they said congress should not waste time by debating all day long, but should just decide things together with the president. One of them was elected. But by far the most commonly mentioned campaign point was the fact that a candidate was online very often. That’s not surprising: we already saw that that’s something congress candidates value very much in a congress member.

Mentioning that you are online often seems
to be a sure way of losing the election

However, this leads to perhaps the most surprising discovery: despite it being one of the most important things for a congress member, as a candidate, mentioning that you are online often seems to be a sure way of losing the election. Only 2 of the elected 18 Dutch congress members had mentioned in their campaign that they are online often, and both of them only mentioned this briefly, encapsulated in more substantial, solid campaign plans. What’s more: of the 9 candidates who had not campaigned at all, also 2 were elected for congress.

I’m not sure how to interpret these data points, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say that being online often is so important for voters and so fundamental to the role of a congress member, that mentioning it in your campaign makes you look suspicious, rather than trustworthy or capable. Alternatively, it could be a sign that you have little else to campaign with and you are trying to make up for your inexperience or lack of plans by showing off your lack of a personal life. In that case, the best campaign is to have no campaign and to just hope for some stray votes.

3. Jokes cannot make up for inexperience

In my analysis, I divided all 48 Dutch February congress candidates into ‘populists’, ‘realists’ and ‘nihilists’ based on their (lack off) campaign. This is not to say that they are populists, realists or nihilists, just that the over-all vibe of their campaign was either based on the form (populist), the contents (realist) or they did not really campaign (nihilist). Surprisingly, while during the election period several candidates complained about the dominance of ‘funny’ campaigns (of which we saw earlier that candidates do not appreciate it at all in a congress member), by far the most campaigns were serious and ‘realist’: 28 of 48 (58.3%). Only 11 candidates (22.9%) were ‘populists’ and the 9 candidates who did not campaign I considered the ‘nihilists’ (18.8%).

But of course, the question is: which group performed best? Well, the populists seem to have been onto something and scored the best: 5 elected Dutch congress members (27.8%) won with a ‘populist’ campaign, with an emphasis on being witty or very (sometimes annoyingly) visible. The realists performed roughly equal to their share: 61.1% of the congress members wone with a realist campaign. The nihilists underperformed significantly: only 11.1% of Dutch congress members won with a nihilist campaign.

Don’t feel shy to brag about your experience:
it will probably work in your favour

However, stats don’t tell the whole story. If we zoom in on the 5 congress members who managed to win a seat with a populist campaign, we see that 4 of them could ‘afford’ to run a populist campaign because they are well-known, experienced and already influential players. This goes hand in hand with the last and final fact that I want to share from my analysis: all five players who mentioned in their campaign that they are experienced players, managed to be elected.

So that’s the final lesson: if you are experienced, don’t be shy and feel free to brag about it as it will probably work in your favour! If you are not experienced, however, don’t try to make up for it by being funny – it won’t work. Instead, try to show your activity by being visibly online often and behave in a serious, trustworthy way.

There is so much more I could have shared from my research, but I feel like I have bored you lovely people already more than enough. Thank you very much for reading all the way here, and let me know in the comments what you think of the lessons!

And to all congress candidates:

It was fun, yet verrry time and energy consuming to collect, analyse and interpret all this data, so a like, tip and/or subscription would be much appreciated! <3