Why Haliman won

Day 1,142, 09:28 • Published in USA USA • by ligtreb
Note: I know this election isn't over yet, but Haliman has a clear 150-vote, 16% lead and I'm calling it for him. If he loses, I'll eat my words later.

Before I begin, let me first say I'm confident Haliman will lead our country well and know he is qualified to be President. To those who don't think he's ready to be President, I ask you all to offer your services to Haliman's cabinet -- if he doesn't use you and he messes up, it's his fault. If you didn't offer to help and he fails, you can't blame him. We're one country and on the same team.

Having spent month after month at the upper levels of the Executive branch, there is no question that Inwegen was the most qualified candidate in this race, even Haliman supporters have to admit that. However, Haliman was the best candidate, as today's results show. Haliman did everything he had to do to win, Inwegen did not. I saw this coming weeks ago, any of you could've if you knew what to look for.

1) Haliman was better at the game mechanics

This might seem crazy considering how much Inwegen knows about this game, but it's true. Game mechanics dictate that the President needs to be elected by a plurality of citizens, meaning that a majority of citizens have to know who you are.

There are plenty of ways to make sure citizens know who you are:

Newspaper: Possibly the most important tool considering how powerful they are with 2-clickers and less-active players, Inwegen failed at getting subscribers and eyeballs. To be fair, Haliman wasn't that impressive here either, but his 403 subscribers is more than double Inwegen's 190 (numbers may change after publishing). Both candidates had their articles orgnetted, so that was even. The subscribers gave Haliman the edge.

Ads: I didn't see a ton of advertising from either side to be honest, but saw more Haliman ads than I did Inwegen ads. Ads are seen by everyone, don't underestimate their power. UPDATE: I know the ad module is currently down, but early in the campaign, it was not. I'm referring to ads I saw then.

Friends: Again, neither candidate has a high number of friends, but Haliman's 923 is again over double Inwegen's 393. Friends isn't just a popularity contest, it's a tool of game mechanics: Your friends see your shouts. I have over 8,000 friends, I know that when I shout something, people see it, they take action or respond to whatever I say.

UPDATE: In-game titles: After reading the comments, decided to add this one. Haliman is the Party President of the nation's largest party and the congressman from the state with the most residents (Florida). A lot of people were already used to voting for him.

2) Haliman played politics correctly, Inwegen barely did if it all

Like it or not, politics is a major part of this game. We have parties, we elect congressmen and we elect Presidents. Politics happen. Inwegen should've known that, I'm old enough to remember when he was active in the USWP and ran for Party President. However he stayed mostly out of the political realm, allowing Haliman to get 8 of the top 10 party endorsements that happened.

Haliman went to work on getting party endorsements a while ago, knowing that party nominations are one of the few things voters see on the voting page that can help distinguish a candidate. There's no presentation or newspaper link like when running for Congress, and Haliman and Inwegen's national goals were similar, so the party nominations would be significant. Haliman narrowly won the Federalist and UIP primaries, having significant leads in both before Inwegen's team realized what happened and started working to make the races close, too little, too late.

As Party President of the USWP, Haliman was well-known in political circles, and since people heavily involved in politics often skew younger in their eRep careers (and aren't involved at the upper levels of the Executive Branch), they knew Haliman a lot better than Inwegen. Inwegen and his team needed to make the case for him in the party primaries much better than they did.

During my long-time in government, I've learned that most executive branch people despise parties and politics. However, you need party support to run for President, it's part of our game mechanics.

3) Haliman campaigned better

Like him or not, Haliman inspired people to support him, Every day for the past week or so, I've seen a lot more shouts and articles in support of Haliman than in support of Inwegen. I'm uniquely qualified to see this because of my friend total, the consensus among people voting for Haliman was they wanted someone new in charge and they liked his ideas in his articles. Players who have only been around for a few months don't care about two years of experience they weren't around for.

4) The military vote

The military isn't a uniform voting block as most military people aren't active in politics. However, Haliman is an officer in the National Guard and has a presence in the military. Inwegen is not in the military as far as I know -- that's a large group of voters there with more exposure to Haliman than Inwegen, especially considering that the military isn't usually involved in the executive branch much (except for the Joint Chiefs of Staff). The military is an extremely large percentage of our country and can't be ignored for national elections.

Finishing thoughts

This election was a tough one on me, since I consider both Inwegen and Haliman good friends, and both have helped me in my career. I would've been happy with whoever won.

This wasn't rocket science, I hope most of my what I wrote is fairly obvious to you. But I've seen way too few candidates in recent months carry out a good campaign.

Thank you all for reading and I'd love to hear your thoughts.