I’m a bit confused about these two. They seemingly contradict one another at times. In my last game, my popularity as displayed through bar graphs on the main screen was often yellow but occasionally green and red, mostly hovering around 50%. After the vote, every group displayed significantlly more red than green, usually on an order of 4 to 1.
what often leads to confusion is the two different metrics.
Popularity is your real popularity, measured for each voter and averaged. The voting result is a binary decision for each voter, they either vote for you, or the opposition.
So for example, if everyone in the electorate ranks you with a popularity of 49%, and the opposition with 51%, you will get 0 votes, so your popularity is 49%, your voting share is 0.
Similarly, you can have a popularity of 51% and a voting result of 100%.
Because of this, its in your interests to have as many people as possible have an opinion of you at 50% or higher, but if someone’s opinion drops below 50, you really don’t care how far it goes.
This is the key to winning elections.
And it’s mirrored in the real world. Political parties have their base who tend to vote for them. The opposition parties base are generally a lost cause, so policies which upset them even more are fine. If someone thinks 10% of you, then letting that drop to 2% doesnt affect you, as you were not going to get their votes anyway.
Similarly, if someone rates you at 80% and that drops to 51%, it doesn’t matter.
That’s why political parties often seem to alienate their hard core support to capture the middle ground. All votes are equal, so if you can gain some middle ground votes by slightly upsetting your fanatical supporters, it’s a good trade.
So for example, if everyone in the electorate ranks you with a popularity of 49%, and the opposition with 51%, you will get 0 votes, so your popularity is 49%, your voting share is 0.
Oh, of course: that makes sense. I should have realized that–especially as someone who personally loathes the “winner-take-all” US system of government! So I have to drive my popularity just a bit higher, at least among the majority of voting groups, to make that nearly even split work for me.