PREVIEW

Election Day teaches how elections work in the United States. Players learn about political parties, public opinion, campaign financing, election law, political marketing, strategic planning, and the media. The game is well-suited for high-school and college students, campaign workers and candidates, activists, civic reformers, and interested members of the general public.

Code

If you want to learn more about the code underlying Election Day, click on the link below to download a compiled help file that summarizes the Visual Basic code used in the game. (Note that this file is included in the full Election Day download.)

Basic Game Design

• 1-5 people play Election Day on any PC desktop computer running Windows95+. (Because of sequential nature of players' turns and other game features, Election Day was not designed to be played on the web.)
• Players choose to be candidates or campaign managers. They can play against one another or compete with computer-managed candidates.
• The goal is to win the election. Players can participate in a variety of local, state, and federal elections from 1988-2020.
• A game can last from 10 minutes to 6 hours, depending on a player's preferred pace and the level of complexity chosen.

Sequence of Play

• During the setup phase of the game, players agree upon the basic game settings and each chooses a candidate and campaign staff.
• During the main phase of the game, players take turns planning candidate activities, supervising campaign staff, setting budgets, studying poll data and maps, and responding to events that occur during the campaign.
• In the post-mortem phase, players study a detailed report of voting results and other effects the election had on the candidates, the electorate, and the political environment.

Design Principals

• Playability: The user-interface employs simple controls, familiar layouts, and a dash of humor to make the game enjoyable.
• Multiple levels of complexity: The game design should be sophisticated enough to challenge politically experienced players. At the same time, the most complex features of the game must be optional and hidden from the view of new players. This permits players to gradually incorporate advanced features as they become more skilled at the game.
• Accuracy: The game is a semi-realistic simulation based on actual campaign laws, census data, public opinion surveys, voting patterns, and historical campaign environments.
• Variety: People who play Election Day will recognize patterns but never experience identical campaigns. Players can choose from over 100 candidates (or create their own), and candidates can run for a wide variety of elected offices across the nation.

Use of Data

Election Day is a simulation game. It is not real. Nonetheless, there are some real data underlying the game that (usually) make it a realistic simulation.

• Cities and states in Election Day have been profiled using U.S. Census data (1990 figures and 1996 estimates). The population, median income, voter turnout, and ethnic makeup of cities and states has an impact on how those cities respond to candidates and what their residents choose to do on election day.
• Election Day also profiles cities and states based on how their residents have voted in past presidential primary and general elections. These data are used to estimate the proportions of populations identifying themselves as Democrats, Republicans, or independents. Voting patterns are used instead of registration data because not every area registers voters by party. Also, official party registration is often a misleading indicator of actual partisanship.
• It is far more difficulty to compare cities and states in terms of public opinion on current issues. There is no database that has comparable questions asked of large samples drawn from every geographic unit in the U.S. To estimate public opinion in states and cities, Election Day uses a combination of judgment and regional breakdowns of 1988-1998 data collected by the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey. Players who take issue with the representations of a city or state's public opinion profile should suggest revisions to the game designers.
• Most of the candidates in Election Day are purely fictional. They are diverse in ideology, background, strengths, and weaknesses. This is not meant to mirror the political world; rather, it is meant to describe the range of possible candidates. Players can create their own candidates, in any case, so players are only limited by their imaginations.
• Presidential candidate profiles are based upon biographical records, campaign documents, and the collective judgment of the game designers. Players who take issue with the representations of the candidates' characteristics and issue positions can adjust them themselves or suggest revisions to the game designers. In any case, the depictions are fictional, so don't get bent out of shape.