Part 26: - Election Post-Game Wrap-Up, Sponsored By Towa Group

Election Post-Game Wrap-Up, Sponsored By Towa Group

Yes, it's time for the election post-game wrap-up, sponsored by Towa Group. Towa Group - want to go into space and become a NEET forever after this election? We have the vans that will get you there!

Anyway, I like to do a bit of a recap thing when I finish an LP, and since I couldn't do it after the last update - I wanted to end it with that video, after all - it'll get its own post. There's a few things I can talk about, and there's going to be one final bit of voting at the end, so look forward to that. But now, here's some of my thoughts.

The Election

- So yeah, I'd just like to reiterate that we won this election with a 3% popular vote deficit, which beats George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore by 500%, and that one was controversial as all fuck. How did this happen? Well, there's a pretty simple reason it went down the way it did. Our two crucial states were California and Florida, and we won both of them 50% to 49%, with the remaining 1% being spread around in such a way that it disappears with rounding. Meanwhile, Michelle stomped the shit out of us in several states, which allowed her to pick up a lot of popular vote.

- Another thing that I found strange as all hell was that we got fucking creamed by and large in the flyover states. It seems the TV ads she had there created a big awareness deficit that our innate advantage of being Republican couldn't counter. However, as you could tell from the result, flyover states mean fuck-all.

- Now, what was it that allowed us to come away with the miracle victory? Well, I think it boils down to the following: California, Florida, Ohio, Indiana. Nailing those four states plus the South (which was won thanks to our Vice President putting in work in gaining awareness for us) was pretty much enough to seal the victory. However, our victories in California and Florida were everything but secure, like I mentioned earlier.

- And let's talk about California a bit more. I genuinely did not believe we had a shot at winning that state after week 16. I figured the only way out was to get a Political Capital HQ up and throw out three Intimidators into California to keep her awareness at bay. However, I very much underestimated just what ten weeks of concentrated issue score manipulation was capable of. I really thought that my crazy "let's fuck up California" plan was just going to be a big laugh, but about halfway through I realized that this could actually work. The election results were a massive nailbiter for me, because I knew that Cali could have gone either way.

- You might have noticed that I was pointing at the Media Bias stat for both candidates in the video. This was because this was probably a major contributing factor to our victory as well. Without that bonus, we might not have won states we did. I'm not saying that I saw this coming and that's why I got that operative that gave us +10 to Media Bias way back when, but it ended up being a really good move.

- And speaking of really good moves in retrospect, I realized that putting the Media Darling in Florida was what ended up winning us that state. We lose Florida, we lose the election. So yeah, this victory has been made possible by multiple mistakes going right in just the right way. Divine intervention, maybe?

- One thing I am a bit disappointed about was that you never wanted to build a Political Capital HQ and get more operatives into the game. To me, at least, operatives are a massive part of winning. However, we somehow managed to make due with exactly what we had.

The LP

- I have many regrets with this LP. The first one is starting it in the first place. I should have realized this game does not make for a good vote-based LP, and the realization came a bit too late to bail out, so I had to stick with it. This is sort of a pet peeve of mine - I've seen way too many interesting LPs just die after an update or two, and because of that I've developed the dogged determination to not fucking quit on my LPs, ever. They might be delayed for a month or two (what happened with Unterwegs in Düsterburg at one point), but god damnit, I'm finishing them, because people are reading them and enjoying them, even if "people" translates out to "like two guys".

- The second one is starting it the way I did - the voting system was atrocious and basically murdered any chance this thread had at having a fairly decent amount of traffic. However, much like a lot of other things in this LP, that was kind of a blessing in disguise. Thanks to the low traffic, things stayed civil the entire time. A fear I had was that the thread was going to blow up into politics-based arguing, but that never happened. We all seemed to be on pretty much the same wavelength. That was nice.

- Another regret is the spreadsheet. It was a necessity, as it delivered vital information, but god damn, the data entry fucking sucked. Data entry always sucks. I'm very glad I didn't have to go through more of that. And honestly, the spreadsheet data entry made this the least pleasant LP I've worked on - and if you've been following my LPs, you should know that the Antitribu Mod bonus LP I did laid down a pretty good mark to beat, as evidenced by the walls of text I wrote about how much I hated that mod. This LP sucked more in an inward way, as I didn't want to discourage you from voting any more than I already have by outwardly voicing my displeasure.

- However, with that being said, I'm still glad you folks enjoyed this. At its core, I do this because I want people to enjoy it. And even if it's only a few, it was still worth it. I mean, I once ran an LP of two horrendously obscure German Indiana Jones fan games that managed to only get to two fucking pages, I'm clearly not in this for the recognition and e-cred. I'm glad I managed to pull a come-from-behind victory out of my ass to give you a high point to end on.

Voting

So, I promised one more round of voting, and it's going to be on something I can't decide on my own: Should I submit this LP to the LP Archive? I'm really not sure myself, so I'll make like a politician and abdicate responsibility. Do my posts alone hold up in such a way that would be entertaining to read? I can't answer that question, so I give it to you. Yes or No?

Beyond that, I guess all I have left to say is thanks for reading and being a part of this!

LET'S PLAY THE POLITICAL MACHINE 2016 - THE END