Elections — Wiki — Atomic Rivals

An election is the moment when popular support becomes governmental power. Between elections, polls can shift as much as they like, but the split of seats and offices stays the same. On election day, the country's electoral system turns current support into a new distribution of power, and the party holding the most becomes the ruling party.

Whether a country holds elections at all is a matter of law, and so is how often and how votes are counted.

The election laws

Four policy sets govern elections (see Policies):

Policy set	What it decides
Elections	Whether regular elections are held at all: Regular Elections or Elections Prohibited. Allowing them adds a little Legitimacy.
Election Cadence	How often elections are held where there is no historical schedule: every three, four or five years.
Electoral System	How votes become power.
Voting Rights	Who may vote.

Countries that already ran elections at the start of the scenario keep their historical schedule, with the real opening election dates and intervals. Abolishing elections forfeits that schedule permanently. Restoring them later starts a new cycle at whatever interval Election Cadence sets.

Related laws decide how much elections matter. Party Competition decides whether opposition parties can organize at all, from clan rule and one-party states through harassed minor parties to open party competition. Executive Power and Legislature decide how much power an elected government actually has.

Electoral systems

System	How power is allocated	Side effects
Single-List Ballot	The leading party takes all governmental power.	Raises ruling party support, costs legitimacy.
First-Past-the-Post	Each province gives all of its population-weighted share to the party that leads there, even on a plurality.	Small stability bonus.
Mixed-Member System	Half of power follows provincial winners, half follows the national vote. The proportional half does not make up for district losses.	Small legitimacy bonus.
Proportional Representation	Power matches each party's national share of support.	More legitimacy, slightly less stability.

Under first-past-the-post, population counts, not the number of provinces. Winning a province that holds 10% of the country's voters is worth 10% of national power, whatever the margin. Winning many small provinces does not outweigh winning a few populous ones. Provinces with no population, or no decided voters, contribute nothing.

The Elections panel shows popular support beside projected power under your current system. You can see in advance what a change of electoral law would do.

The campaign

An election campaign opens three calendar months before polling day. Each week of the campaign can bring an incident:

Endorsements and scandals add or remove temporary campaign support for a party. They are applied province by province before votes are counted, so they can swing local winners. Each incident and each party has a cap.
Policy pressure arises when parties holding more than half of popular support back a law that a party in government opposes. You can hold your position, which costs the ruling party five points of campaign support, or concede, which costs five prestige and permanently changes the opposing government parties' policy preferences. Conceding does not enact the law, and campaign promises are flavor only.

Campaign decisions pause the game when they arrive. While one is open, no further weekly incidents arrive, and if it is still open on polling day the election waits for your answer. Temporary campaign support is removed once the result is in. Each campaign keeps a dated log of its incidents beside the result.

After the vote

The winning distribution of power is applied, and then a government has to be formed. A coalition needs more than half of governmental power, made up of ideologically compatible parties. If no compatible majority exists, the largest party governs alone as a minority government. That adds 25% to the daily political capital cost of every reform (Reform Political Capital Cost) until a majority is restored. You confirm the government in the Politics view's Parties tab.

Elections in a crisis

During a power struggle, a government whose constitution provides for elections can call early elections for 10 political capital. This lowers the struggle's tension, and the vote takes place 90 days later with its campaign starting at once. Any election held during a power struggle ends it. A government that wins comes out with a fresh mandate, its legitimacy raised to at least 60%. If the voters choose someone else, power changes hands peacefully. The option is not offered if an election is already due within those 90 days. An AI government calls early elections when the struggle is tense and its ruling party leads the polls.

Where support comes from

Election results are only as good as the support behind them. Support is built province by province from party appeal, the preferences of the Factions backing each party, local Unrest, and the ruling party support (Ruling Party Support) that media laws raise and low Stability erodes. See Politics for the full picture.