Do People Want to Be President? And Other Such Questions!

Calvin Coolidge

Spellcaster
Forum Administrator
Honoured Citizen
Citizen
From the 27th to the 28th of May, I conducted a poll in the Grand Hall that garnered 27 responses. I asked people to say which positions in Europeia they would like to attain over the course of their career. Let's get into the data.

To begin, here's the demographics of the people who took this poll. We can see there's a pretty even split between new and older players, so we should be able to see the interests of all Europeians represented across this poll.
Poll1.jpg


Next, I wanted to see if there were any preference differences between different types of players when it came to social and political. To start, though, we can see that our region has practically no "social only" players, with the numbers split pretty evenly between political and political/social players.
Poll2.jpg


But let's get into the rankings. Here are all the positions, sorted by popularity.
  • Senator - 77.8%
  • First Minister - 70.4%
  • Second Minister - 70.4%
  • Speaker of the Senate - 63%
  • Chief of State - 55.6%
  • Vice Chancellor - 55.6%
  • Minister of Communications - 51.9%
  • Minister of Culture - 51.9%
  • Minister of Interior - 51.9%
  • Vice Chief of State - 48.1%
  • Councillor of Foreign Affairs - 44.4%
  • Minister of Radio - 40.7%
  • Associate Justice - 40.7%
  • Supreme Chancellor - 40.7%
  • Mayor of Arnhelm - 37%
  • Councillor of World Assembly Affairs - 33.3%
  • Attorney General - 33.3%
  • Chief Justice - 33.3%
  • World Assembly Delegate - 29.6%
  • Grand Admiral - 25.9%
  • Councillor of Coordination - 14.8%
Obviously, there's a lot to get into regarding this list, but to begin, it's interesting that the popularity of our positions really run the gamut, from the uber popular positions in the seventies, to the least popular ones that barely register at twenty-five percent or less.

To help categorize, I'm going to break things down by government area from here on and say what these numbers suggest for each of them.

Legislative Branch
Starting with our most popular area, we see that the Senate is incredibly popular, with both Senator and Speaker in the top five most popular positions, and Senate even being the most sought after position in the region. This tracks what we can observe from past trends, as we see a ton of competition in Senate elections, moreso than any other kind of election. Speaker, the position above Senator in power, is notably less popular, a trend we will see multiple times in this data. From there, there's a huge drop-off to Mayor of Arnhelm, however, as just over a third of people would want to serve in that position. Whether this is due to real life nature of Arnhelm legislation, or the relative newness of the position is unclear, but Arnhelm clearly has some work to do to become a more broadly appealing part of the region, relative to its legislative counterpart.

Domestic Executive
Our next most popular area also does pretty well for itself, with First and Second Minister sharing the number two spot in overall popularity, and almost all of its ministries earning majority pursuit. The only ministry that falls below the majority is Radio. Again, the reasons for this are unclear, but it's possible that the perceived requirement to participate in broadcasts and reveal your voice is a deal-breaker. It could also be the time commitment of hosting broadcasts, but again, we just don't know for sure. What we do know is that overall the domestic government has broad appeal to Europeians, who pursue almost all facets of it at a broad level.

Foreign Affairs Executive
We now have reached the first area of government to have multiple positions garner less than a majority interest. While Chief of State and Vice Chief of State are sought by nearly half of respondents, with the Councillor of Foreign Affairs not far behind, there is much less interest in serving as Councillor of World Assembly, Grand Admiral, and Coordination. Coordination you could chalk up to being a temporary council, with a less defined history in the region, but the other two have less obvious reasons for the disinterest. Grand Admiral is only sought by a quarter of respondents, which may not be hugely surprising due to the Navy's lack of activity and visibility lately, is certainly disappointing for such an important role in carrying out our ideals on a world stage. World Assembly Affairs is somewhat more popular than the Delegate themselves, who will we include here, rather than in its own section, but that's a low bar to clear, with the Delegate also only appealing to a quarter of respondents. This shows that the pool of those interested in rising through the ranks of World Assembly is low, which again, is a perception we knew about, but is still disappointing.

The Chancellery
Obviously, this area of government is different than the rest, as it is appointment only, with no defined term limits, and is among the most exclusive in the game. That exclusivity, though, does not translate into popularity. Vice Chancellor is actually more popular than Supreme Chancellor, another time that a deputy position exceeds the popularity of its superior. This may be due to the fact that many think the Supreme Chancellor position is unattainable, or perhaps people just don't want the top spot, but it's interesting nonetheless, given this is mostly a ceremonial role anyway.

Judicial Branch
This is the first area to have no positions have a majority of respondents wish to serve in. I'm including Attorney General here, as it doesn't fit neatly into either executive area. The most popular position here is Associate Justice, the final place where the deputy exceeds its superior in popularity. Associate Justice is decently popular, too, with forty percent of respondents interested in the position. Chief Justice and Attorney General, though, wind up near the bottom of the pack, with only a third of respondents wanting to serve as either. This shows a stark lack of appetite among the region to serve in judicial roles.

That's all the positions that exist currently in government, but I also tested a few positions that have been in the conversation as likely additions to the roster, so here's the data for them.
  • Vice President - 85.2%
  • President - 74.1%
  • Chair of the Citizens' Assembly - 40.7%
  • None - 3.7%
Here we see that every new position outperforms the position it would replace, or serve alongside. Vice President and President would actually go at the top of the list, above First and Second Minister, while Chair edges out Mayor of Arnhelm. Of course, as these roles do not yet exist, the actual number of people who would pursue them if they exist in a form different than currently perceived may differ from their current levels of support. However, this is encouraging for proponents of these positions, as we can see that each position carries sizable approval. Particularly, proponents of a return to the Presidency should find comfort in these numbers, as there have been concerns over whether people would run for President, given its increased workload.

Lastly, here are the comments collected from this poll
  • I'm still unsure about the merge of the FM and CoS. Hopefully soon I'll make a decision about it.
  • I think the re-merge is a good choice, so I'm looking forward to seeing Presidents again.
  • no, but just wanted to say hi calvin and i feel like this is a very agenda motivated poll 👀
  • I am really looking forward to the unified executive and the new positions of president and vice president.
  • To me, the most enjoyable roles are those where any regular tasks that you *necessarily* have to do aren't super time consuming, so you have time to work on bigger/broader protects as fully as you'd like (I guess this mostly applies to ministry/council positions)
  • Is Founder available?
  • Is there an up-to-date glossary of each position?
I hope this data helps move our conversation forward as we continue to debate reform, and examine the future of all these positions. Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, dreaming.
 
Great article Calvin! I think I should receive something as holder of the most and least wanted position.
 
Lovely article, and I'm honestly not surprised at some of these trends. The Senate has the unique situation of being essential for the region's workings, while also being a body rather than a single person, sharing responsibility and thus perhaps being more appealing to newcomers (it sure was for me). The domestic executive is the familiar one, while the foreign-focused executive does have either less of desire to participate in, or simply something seen as harder to achieve or excel in. Interesting such high ratings for President and VP though. I hope that translates into competitive elections and a good candidate field if the emerge is completed.

Very interesting article, Calvin!
 
I remember a time when FA was the sought after position, but maybe it's true and splitting it all off really did put FA on a back burner. I hope that changes.

I can say I've seen a marked up-tick in FA activity, with a lot of citizens who formerly weren't interested at all now engaging 100%! GA was only surprising because I remember a time it was coveted as well.
 
Awesome article Calvin! It's sad to see WAA languishing near the bottom in terms of interest there D: I've been finding activity in the Council has been pretty good recently so I guess I just need to persuade all my staff to become future WA Councillors!

In general these numbers do make sense, though. It fits that people are more willing to take roles with less absolute responsibility and accountability, such as deputy positions or in the Senate where you work in a team.
 
Guess I'm safe from Drecq and DH trying to coup me. Who wants my job anyway? :p
 
Guess I'm safe from Drecq and DH trying to coup me. Who wants my job anyway? :p
me
Sorry who's qualified that wants my job?
Me.
Sorry but there's a small prereq to be SC: don't be blocked by other citizens :p
so it's only an issue if they have the potential or current SC blocked and not the SC having them blocked? 🤔 Good to know.

blocks lethen and pulls a keshi
 
Great article! I'll admit I wasn't expecting some of the results. I honestly thought radio would be more popular. Regardless, it seems we have a lot of ambitious Europeians.
 
Guess I'm safe from Drecq and DH trying to coup me. Who wants my job anyway? :p
me
Sorry who's qualified that wants my job?
Me.
Sorry but there's a small prereq to be SC: don't be blocked by other citizens :p
so it's only an issue if they have the potential or current SC blocked and not the SC having them blocked? 🤔 Good to know.

blocks lethen and pulls a keshi
Your logic doesn't track here? Or at least it doesn't make sense in relation to what I said :p You can't ever be SC is ultimately my point
 
Guess I'm safe from Drecq and DH trying to coup me. Who wants my job anyway? :p
me
Sorry who's qualified that wants my job?
Me.
Sorry but there's a small prereq to be SC: don't be blocked by other citizens :p
so it's only an issue if they have the potential or current SC blocked and not the SC having them blocked? 🤔 Good to know.

blocks lethen and pulls a keshi
Your logic doesn't track here? Or at least it doesn't make sense in relation to what I said :p You can't ever be SC is ultimately my point

"Sorry but there's a small prereq to be SC: don't be blocked by other citizens :p" 🤔
 
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