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Table of Contents
1 - April Prizes
2 - Presidential Approval Ratings
3 - "The Numbers"
4 - Current Events (EDEN, Congress, POTUS)
5 - Other Data
6 - Notes for Nerds
7 - Notes for Noobs
8 - Final Notes / Now Hiring!

April Prizes

We are pleased to be able to announce that participants in the month of April will be eligible to win one of TEN prizes. This is the second month in a row that we've been able to do this, and while it has not significantly increased participation like we'd hoped, we still enjoy seeing folks rewarded for helping us out. If you enjoy and appreciate what Synergy does, be sure and thank our sponsors!

April Prizes (listed with the sponsor):
1) Q3 House (NKBlue)
2) Q1 House (Aersidius)
3) 3 Q1 Weapons (Erik Victor, CEO of BigJohnsons (BJC))
4) 5.4g (three days of Napoleon training; Democratic Republicans)
5) 5g (Lucus Casius)
6) 5g (ERX, the eRepublik Stock Exchange)
7) 5g (t'jelle Bank)
😎 2g credit (eRepX.com)
9) 1g (Alexander Whalen)
10) 1g (stalker1984)

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Presidential Approval Rating

Due to the limitations of eRepublik, the images are shrunk on the article page. Click on any chart in this article to see the full sized version.


The chart on the left combines "Slightly Approve" and "Approve" on the one hand and &quot😉isapprove" and "Slightly Disapprove" on the other.


President PigInZen's overall approval rating has dropped 5% to 77%. What is interesting is that for the first time in Synergy Poll history, the approval is virtually the same among Less Active (less than 30 minutes/day) and More Active (more than 30/day). Usually, the Less Active citizens have a generally more favorable view of the country's leadership and thus inflate the overall rating. This has been true for every poll that we have taken up until now. In this poll, the difference between the two groups was only 0.54%.

Looking deeper, we can see that the overall decline is reflected in two specific ways. First, the number those who "strongly approve" has declined by 5%. Usually, this is reflected by a corresponding increase in "Slightly Approve" but it appears that the downward trend is passed all the way to the bottom. It is the "strongly disapprove" crowd that has had a corresponding increase.

It appears that the nation's ill mood has only continued to worsen.





Where economics are concerned, the President's approval rating has once again taken a downward turn. With new hospital rules fundamentally changing how much players must spend to maintain high wellness, many are seeing their accounts slowly decline as the expense of buying food and gifts exceeds the meager wages which are being paid. Perhaps this is reflected in these approval numbers, or perhaps this is just a continuation of a trend that began early in February.

It has been a rough month diplomatically. Missteps on the part of the US met harsh criticism from allies who filled the US media with trolling articles for weeks. Add to that the fact that congress, at the request of President PigInZen, voted to withdraw from EDEN, and we can begin to understand the steep decline in the President's approval rating for diplomacy. The drop has been especially drastic among Less Active citizens who one must assume are just now beginning to see how poor relations are with certain nations who were supposed to be our friends. On the other hand, among More Actives there was a polarization. Those who "strongly disapproved" increased, but so did those who "strongly agree."

To a lesser extent, the President's military numbers have also declined. This also appears to be a continuation of a trend which originated in early February. Americans have not been satisfied with the President's handling of military matters since the Asia Campaign during President Jewitt's term in office.

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"The Numbers"


Participants were asked to rate the performance of each entity from 1 to 4

In "The Numbers" section, which measures an entity's performance with a GPA-like grade, President PigInZen has now fallen to fourth in the ratings, almost joining the main pack. Vaulting into the top position is NXNW, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The only one coming anywhere close to his rating is Mr. Hyphenated, but even that is only among More Active citizens. Also worth mention is Secretary of Defense Angelini who has now achieved a 3.04 rating and moved into second place overall.



Most government organizations continued to decline this month. The top three - the eUS Military, the Training Corps, and The Welcome Committee - saw little change. On the bright side, the seemingly cursed North American University saw a slight increase, though they still remain far behind even Congress (how embarrassing!).




As you know, we focus each month on one particular individual and one particular organization. This month's individual to be spotlighted is Andy Costello. Andy came into office virtually unknown. He ran a respectable campaign and garnered enough votes to take the second place/VPOTUS position. Though Costello's rating has remained virtually unchanged overall, a closer look reveals some changes. Among those who are Less Active, Costello's rating has fallen. We can probably credit this to the behind-the-scenes nature of the work that Costello has been doing ever since the election. On the other hand, among More Active citizens, Costello's rating has increased. Perhaps this is an indication that those who are aware of what Andy has been up to since election day are increasingly approving of how he does his job.

Under the spotlight for government organizations is the State Department. In February, the State Department's rating lingered just under 3.0, but during March that rating has decreased somewhat - a reflection of diplomatic tensions. This downward trend has primarily been driven by Less Active players whose decline in approval for the State Department has been steeper than among More Active players.

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Current Events

The Presidential Election

We delayed the beginning of our poll by 24 hours this cycle for a variety of reasons, but one of those reasons was the hope that by doing so we could be more sure of who the contenders for POTUS would be. At the time that invites went out, the three who appeared to be legitimate contenders were Kyle321n, CivilAnarchy, and Woxan. Unfortunately, shortly after we began polling, all of that changed. In a surprise announcement, Secretary of State Bradley Reala and Secretary of Defense Angelini announced that they would be running together for POTUS/VPOTUS. That same afternoon Kyle321n dropped out of the race and endorsed Bradley Reala. As a result, our poll results for this section are lacking. We still wanted to share the results with you, but we do so with little comment except to say that Woxan handily defeated each of his opponents and that CivilAnarchy and Kyle321n were much closer in their results (with Kyle321n pulling ahead slightly).



The withdrawal from EDEN

Another reason that we delayed the beginning of the poll by a day was to be sure of the results of a congressional vote which was not yet released to the public. That vote was to withdraw the eUS from EDEN. That vote was closed just as we began asking participants this question: "Last week, President PigInZen requested that the US congress formally withdraw the US from EDEN. After much debate, Congress has now approved the President's request. We are no longer members of EDEN. Which of the following best expresses your feelings concerning this decision?"



As you can see, reaction to this important decision is pretty evenly split among those who agree and disagree. 39% said they either strongly or somewhat agree with the decision to withdraw, while 37% said they either strongly or somewhat disagreed. It would seem that those who agreed with the decision generally felt stronger about it as 24% "strongly agreed" as opposed to only 17% who said they "strongly disagreed." This close division bodes ill for politicians moving forward who must step carefully or risk alienating themselves from a significant portion of citizens.

The Role of Congress

One question which arose among congressmen in relation to the vote on withdrawing from EDEN was whether or not this was a matter for Congress to be deciding. Currently the eUS Constitution leaves such decisions to the President, however, it allows that the President can delegate such decisions to Congress if he sees fit. We decided to ask participants whether or not they felt that Congress should have a say in whether or not the eUS joins or leaves an alliance.



As you can see, a very large majority of both Less and More Active citizens said that the Congress should play a role in these important decisions. Only 14% said that they felt the decision should be left to the President and JCS. This leads one to question whether or not the Constitution should be amended in order to reflect the overwhelming opinion of the nation.

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Other Data




Once again, the results of our question about RL age are not surprising. This time we managed to attract the attention of 2 people who indicated that they were over 65 (Hi, grandma!).

Synergy Research Group enjoyed a slight increase in participation this cycle. Interestingly, we had the exact same number of Less Active participants. The increase came entirely from More Active players participating in the poll. Thank you to all who respond to the invites!

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Notes for Nerds

- The margin of error for this poll is +/- 6% (5.61😵 based on a 95% confidence level. At the time of this release, the total population (by our criteria) was not available from the GSO, so we had to use an alternate method of calculating the population. Though this method is slightly less reliable, we are still confident that a margin of error of 6% is accurate.

- Our response percentage INCREASED to 16.22% from 13.06% in our previous poll.

- For those keeping count, we have calculated that sending out 1800 invitations takes approximately 11,000 clicks and 360 Captchas. Fun times.

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Notes for Noobs

Here are some links to help anyone who was not familiar with the entities and initiatives talked about in the poll:

President PigInZen
Vice President Andy Costello
Secretary of State Bradley Reala
Secretary of the Treasury DrTango
Secretary of Defense Angelini
Secretary of the Media Mr. Hyphenated
Secretary of the Interior maxx johnson
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff NXNW
Speaker of the House Rheinlander von Phalz
The eUS Congress
The State Department
The Welcome Committee
The Pony Express
The Training Corps
The eUS Military
The North American University

Links specific to this polling cycle:

The US withdraws from the EDEN alliance
Woxan/Newton Campaign (as well as the next article)
CivilAnarchy's Campaign
Bradley Reala's Presidential Announcement

For the individuals, don't forget to give their papers a look!

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Final Notes - We're hiring!

- The Synergy Poll Data Package is a PDF file which contains the full results from the survey including over 75 charts. Purchasers of the Data Package are free to use the data and charts in their own newspapers so long as proper credit is given to Synergy Research Group (include a link please!). To obtain a copy of the most recent Data Package: PM Synergy Research Group with a) the release date(s) for the Data Packages you wish to obtain, and b) a valid email address, then donate 5 USD to SRG's account and we'll get back to you within 24hrs (usually much less).

-In addition to the current Data Package, we are offering the previous Data Packages for FREE! PM us your email address and we'll send it as quickly as possible.

- We are also pleased to announce that you can now obtain a LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION to the Synergy Poll Data Package for only 5 GOLD! Don't miss this great opportunity!

- If you would like to help the Synergy Research Group, feel free to make a donation of any amount to the organization (just PM us to let us know!). Alternatively, you can help out by sponsoring a prize for May. You can sponsor the prize on behalf of yourself, your party, your organization, your branch, etc. etc. Simply donate the gold/good then PM us telling us who you are sponsoring on behalf of. What is the benefit to you? Well, your sponsorship is mentioned in the Synergy Poll invitations which are sent to 1800 for each poll. That is 3600 PMs that have your name on it! Talk about increasing your name recognition! We already have 3 prizes lined up for May and we will stop sponsorships when we have ten prizes for May.

- WE'RE HIRING. In case you missed it, it takes an incredible amount of time and patience to send out the necessary number of invites to conduct each Synergy Poll. This is wearing down the co-owners of SRG quickly. In addition, we are in discussions to expand the Synergy brand into another endeavor which will require a great deal of our time be devoted elsewhere. For these reasons, we will be looking to hire someone to help us send out invitations. We will probably be posting more on this in another article soon. If you are interested, talk with either Oakden or AmyHat on IRC.

- Look for the next Synergy Poll to be released sometime around the 20th of April....just before the next Congressional Election.

Until next time,
Synergy Research Group

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