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Table of Contents
1 - Prize Winners!
2 - Presidential Approval Ratings
3 - "The Numbers"
4 - Current Events (eUK Peace, Zoli Scandal)
5 - Other Data
6 - Notes for Nerds
7 - Notes for Noobs
8 - Final Notes / Buy a Data Package!

Prize Winners!

We were pleased this month with the number of individuals and organizations who have stepped forward to support Synergy Research Group by supplying goods and gold for prizes. In an ideal world, the opportunity to express one's opinion would be motivation enough, but we all know that the potential to win prizes is an even more powerful motivator. We want to once again thank those who have sponsored prizes for this month: ErikVictor CEO of Big Johnson's Corp., Brilanta Stelo Inc., and Sozo. Because of their generosity, we are able to offer around 15 times the amount of prizes as we did last month.

We had a total of 593 responses to the two Synergy Polls that were run this month. As promised, we have drawn 3 random submission numbers - one for each prize.

And the lucky winners are....

Nethoe von Braun who wins a Q2 House along with 20 USD to help get him moved in (sponsored by Erik Victor & Big Johnson's Corp.)!

jessie james69 who wins 2 gold (sponsored by Brilanta Stelo Inc.)!

and....

TheHypnotoad who wins 5 gold (sponsored by Sozo)!

Congratulations to our winners! They will be notified via PM of their winnings. Also, thank you to the other 590 or so who participated in the Synergy Poll!

Sponsors are already lining up to provide prizes for next month's Synergy Poll. If you or your company would like to put up a prize, you will be rewarded by seeing your name mentioned repeatedly to around 3000 players. Think of what that could mean for your eBusiness! Think of what that could mean for your political career! PM Synergy Research Group if you are interested!

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Presidential Approval Rating


The chart on the left combines "Slightly Approve" and "Approve" on the one hand and &quot😉isapprove" and "Slightly Disapprove" on the other. Click on any chart in this article to see the full sized version.

President Josh Frost continues to enjoy a high approval rating of 94% - unchanged from our last poll. Once again we find that among Less Active citizens (less than 30 minutes per day), President Frost's support is less enthusiastic with 50% declaring only "slight" approval rather than full approval.







Despite the fact that President Josh Frost's overall approval rating remained unchanged, his rating in the specific areas of Economy and Military dropped. Only 81% approve of the President's performance on economic matters - down from 90% only 10 days ago. In military matters, the President only garnered 82% approval - down from 91% in our last poll. These drops in approval correspond with a less than expected improvement in the economy, a tough loss in London, and the signing of a peace treaty with the eUK. Despite a troubled week of shaky cooperation between EDEN allies, the President's diplomatic approval rating remained mostly unchanged with a slightly less than 1% increase (89😵.




Looking deeper into the numbers, we find that even among those who approve of the President, approval has slipped somewhat. Notice especially in the President's economic approval that there is a sharp drop in full approval among More Active citizens (more than 30 minutes per day). Fortunately for the President, there does not appear to be corresponding movement among those who disapprove. In other words, among those who disapprove, there is no significant shift toward stronger disapproval.

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"The Numbers"


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

There is a new leader among job performance ratings. NXNW, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has overtaken both Vice President McFarland and President Frost with an overall 3.38 (out of 4) rating. Notice, however, that among Less Active players, it is a photo finish with each separated by only 0.01 points and in a slightly different order - McFarland, Frost, and NXNW. Bringing up the rear, but not by nearly as much as in past polls, are Woxan, Rheinlander von Phalz, and Jude Connors. Whereas past polls showed a leader group, the average group, and the stragglers, this poll shows that the stragglers have caught up to the majority of public figures.

(NOTE: We became aware of Woxan's resignation as Secretary of State only after the polling had begun. However, because this resignation was not announced until the closing few hours of the poll, we do not believe this to have seriously impacted the polling results.)



The top three rated government organizations remain unchanged with the eUS Military leading the pack followed by the Welcome Committee and the Training Corp (a branch of the military). After coming in last place on our last poll, The Congress has rallied to overtake once again the currently out-of-session North American University. The Pony Express, which has managed to avoid a last place mention thusfar, appears to be slipping and among Less Active players is tied with Congress for next to last.



Name recognition is paramount in a political simulation like eRepublik, and we see little change in the percentages of people who recognize the names of government officials. As expected, the President, Vice-President, and Secretary of State (a former Presidential candidate himself) are all well recognized, while Secretary Jude Connors and Speaker Rheinlander von Phalz continue to work without much recognition.




The Synergy Poll now tracks the performance ratings of individuals over time (where we can). You will have to purchase the Synergy Poll Data Package (only 5 USD!) to see all of the tracking charts, but we want to give you a bit of a taste. We will focus on a new individual and a new organization in each release.

In this release, we bring you Secretary of the Treasury Sydiot. Sydiot has served in this capacity since our very first Synergy Poll, though that first poll used a different rating system and therefore cannot be tracked. Still we are able to see the last three sets of data on Sydiot's job performance. As you can see there is a slow decline in the rating performance. Given the drastic changes that have taken place in eUS economy during Sydiot's tenure, one could argue that such steady and slight decline exceeds expectations. No doubt some of the decline is a result of growing frustration over the current eUS tax system, a hot topic of debate in the current Congress.

The Welcome Committee has also appeared on all of the Synergy Poll lists. Here we see a somewhat sharper increase in performance rating in the last few weeks. This will no doubt please eUS citizens who in past polls have indicated overwhelmingly that they believe citizen retention to be the top priority for our nation. Find someone that works in the Welcome Committee or the Department of the Interior and pat them on the back! They've been doing a good job!

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Current Events

We did our Current Events section slightly differently this time. Rather than using a numbered rating system as in the past, we matched up specific issues and asked participants to choose which of the issues was most important for the eUS at this time.



When faced with the choice of "domestic issues" (education, citizen retention, etc.) or "foreign affairs" (war against Phoenix, diplomatic relations with allies, etc.), the citizenry is almost exactly split down the middle with only a 0.60% difference between the two. This is somewhat surprising given the fact that past polls have shown many more people valuing things like citizen retention than improving relations with our allies. Separating responses by activity level, the numbers are not quite as even. Among Less Active players, Foreign Affairs comes out ahead by about 4% while among More Active citizens, Domestic Issues win out by just under 3%.



We were interested to see if eMericans preferred one theater of the war over another, so we asked them to choose between the war in Asia, the war in Greece/Turkey, or a new war in South America. A large majority indicated that the war in Asia should be the top priority for the eUS (62😵 (HelloKitty Here We Come!). eMerican's do not seem especially interested in attacking South American targets with only 12% preferring a new theater of war in the Southern Hemisphere.



After the minor PTO activities of the last congressional elections, we were curious to find out how citizens responded when forced to choose between saving a few seats in their own congress and saving the entire congresses of neutral countries. The results were fairly even, but 6.02% eMericans were more willing to sacrifice a few of their own congressional seats in order to save smaller, neutral countries from PTO attempts. It should be noted, however, that among Less Active players, the results were around 1% away from being a tie. More Active players, on the other hand, chose to save neutral congresses by almost 10%.



Given the recent tensions with Romania, we asked participants to choose between improving those relations or making sound strategic choices as to which battles we fight in. While a large majority (69😵 indicated that we should make sound battle choices even when those choices are at the cost of improving relations with Romania, there was a sizable minority (31😵 who indicated the opposite - that we could afford to step back from war strategy to address the relationship with Romania. Among More Active players, it was 35% who indicated that the relationship with Romania is more important than making sound battle choices.



Interestingly, citizens prefer that savings be set aside for the launch of eRepublik v2 over the use of those funds to conduct war against Phoenix. Whether or not those same citizens would enjoy the relative peace and inactivity that such a policy would induce is another question.

The eUK Peace Treaty


59% of those polled indicated that they agreed with President Frost's decision to end the invasion of the eUK and sign the peace treaty which was offered by that nation. Among More Active players, the agreement was even higher at 61%. However, among Less Active citizens, only 55% agreed that it was the right move. Overall, this seems to be a relatively split issue with 41% of citizens indicating that they either disagreed with the decision or were unsure of how they felt.



We also were interested to see who, if anyone, the citizenry blamed for the inability of the eUS to fully conquer the eUK. 54% of respondents blamed someone while 45% indicated that they either did not blame anyone or believed that the campaign was a success. Among those who did place blame, responses seemed to vary based on activity level. Among More Active players, blame was placed on our EDEN Allies whose showing during the battle of London left a lot to be desired. However, among Less Active players, the same percentage (19😵 indicated that "people who fought with no weapons" were to blame. Surprisingly few placed blame on either Presidents Jewitt or Josh Frost, though slightly more placed the blame on the current President Frost.

The Zoli Scandal



We asked participants whether they were aware, before taking the poll, that Zoli was an "enemy propagandist." Only 52% indicated that they knew this beforehand. This is somewhat shocking as Zoli is, in many ways, the face of Phoenix in the eUS. Only Glad0s or Battlegazi could rival his name recognition among our enemies, but 48% of our population did not associate him with his home nation - Hungary - or his true loyalties - Phoenix.



As a somewhat tongue-in-cheek follow-up question, we asked whether the participant would consider supporting someone who "is or has been" a supporter of Phoenix. 78% said no, but 22% indicated either that they would or that they were undecided.

All of this seems to indicate that the eUS remains somewhat vulnerable to Zoli's influence (72% of Less Active citizens didn't know he was an enemy propagandist), there is yet hope that if word can be spread of Zoli's true loyalties, he might be prevented from winning public office.

Note from SRG Co-Owner Robert Oakden: Some of you loved the questions on Zoli, but there were a number who objected to the "push polling." My response is two-fold. First, "push polling" is when a pollster presents a debatable statement within the question in order to either a) skew the results, or b) spread their own opinion. In the case of the Zoli question, I would argue that identifying Zoli as an "enemy propagandist" does not qualify as a "debatable statement." Love him or hate him, it is a verifiable fact that he is an enemy propagandist. Second, while we go out of our way to remain unbiased in the way we ask questions and present results regarding domestic political issues, is it not asking too much to expect us to set aside our loyalty to the eUSA when polling? Zoli is a dangerous enemy of the eUSA who now has the opportunity to create havoc in our political system. While collecting data as to his recognizability among eUS citizens, we at the same time notified citizens of Zoli's background. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

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Other Data




The first chart shows the proportions of respondents based on their indicated activity level. The second chart shows overall party affiliation.

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Notes for Nerds

- The margin of error for this poll is +/- 5% (5.27😵 based on a 95% confidence level. The total population used to calculate this number was based on the census information provided by the Government Statistics Office.

- Our response percentage increased to 18.22% falling just shy of our record so far (18.83% on 1/20). As always, we are optimistic that future polls will see better response rates.

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Notes for Noobs

Once again, a number of you mentioned in the comment box that you would like to see links to the various individuals and organizations mentioned in the Synergy Poll. Unfortunately, Google Forms does not make this easy (see previous article in this paper). If you were wondering about the individuals/organizations mentioned in the poll, use these links to find out more information:

President Josh Frost
Vice President Max McFarland 2
Secretary of State Woxan
Secretary of the Treasury Sydiot
Secretary of Defense Publius
Secretary of the Media Lieutenant Schiesskopf
Secretary of the Interior Jude Connors
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff NXNW
Speaker of the House Rheinlander von Phalz
The US Congress
The State Department
The Welcome Committee
The Pony Express
The Training Corps
The US Military
The North American University

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

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Final Notes - Buy the Synergy Poll Data Package!

AidenAstrup, founder of t'jelle Bank: "Synergy's Data Package is the most comprehensive data compilation I have seen in my entire eRepublik life and it offers information that is astounding as well as informing. Synergy offers all eRepublik citizens the ability to peer deeper into the eRepublik system and what makes it operate."

- The Synergy Poll Data Package is a PDF file which contains the full results from the survey including over 50 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.

- Thanks are once again due to PigInZen from the Government Statistics Office for his help in obtaining an even more reliable population total to work with.

- As we mentioned in a previous article, starting next month, we are changing the timing of the Synergy Polls. Our next poll will be conducted at the end of this month and will be released on around the 1st of March. From that point on, our plan is to conduct Synergy Polls around the 1st and 20th of every month. We hope this will make the results more timely and informative.

Until next time,
Synergy Research Group

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