EBC Liveblog: General Election November 2024


Hello Europeians and welcome to the EBC Liveblog on the first General Election with Approval Voting! This election features a grand 10 candidates throwing their hats in the ring, and with the election being underway for about half an hour, the first 20 votes are already in!

This is the current standing:

1731704699017.png


Apologies for revealing my votes, that is by no means an expectation, this is just for convenience! Though as you can see, even the Minister of Media's private affairs are unbiased!

A first observation would have us notice the biggest discrepancy between candidate votes, which is Hyanygo versus the rest. I'd like to invite everyone, but especially mister @SkyGreen to comment on the results so far in this first half hour!
 
Hello Vorhollah, thank you for inviting me.
Glad to see you are free of bias!

In order to not pressure others into revealing their votes I will just tell you that as of the moment of me writing this we are slated to see John Laurens, Caldrasa, Sopo, Calvin Coolidge, sanjurika, Andusre, and Rand in the next Senate.

Comparing it to the ENN's recent poll, we are noticing that for Sopo, Calvin, sanju, Andy, Rand, and JL the results are roughly as expected.
The surprise here is that Caldrasa is outperforming the results they got in the poll by a noticable amount, but we will have to wait and see how things develop over the next few hours
 
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Thank you for your comments, SkyGreen! As Sky mentions, you should definitely check out the ENN poll to get a view on what mattered to citizens prior to the election, as well as a snapshot of what we were expecting before the polls opened!

I'd like to invite the author of the Elections Act rewrite @Rand to provide us with some comments on the current ongoings! Rand, what is your perspective on the campaigning period with a grand 10 candidates and the subsequent first moments of the polls opening with the Approval Voting changes? What should we take away from the activity in the election so far, and are the results so far what you were expecting?

No doubt a grand 10 candidates has broad implications for the activity of our region generally. I'd like to ask @upc how he feels about the grand increase in candidates this election, and the results so far!
 
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While we wait for our panelists' responses, I thought it high time to provide another snapshot of the election results so far, here at the 4 and a half hour mark into the election! Behold the results so far:

1731719922657.png


The numbers have remained rather stable, but with two changes compared to when SkyGreen posted several hours ago: Cordova has pulled ahead of Caldrasa, with a three vote margin between the two. John Laurens has sunk to exactly 50% of the vote, meaning he is exactly one vote away from achieving the majority required as of now. If the election were to be called now, we'd have Cordova, Sopo, Calvin, Sanju, Andusre, and Rand filling the next Senate.

Additionally, I thought it interesting to take a look at the exit poll results so far! Don't forget to take the poll if you voted in this election! So far, our 18 respondents (out of 38 total votes) paint the following picture:

Forms response chart. Question title: How many candidates did you vote for?. Number of responses: 18 responses.


A high degree of diversity among respondents in how many votes they chose to cast! 16.8% of respondents chose to cast more votes than they would've been able to under the old system. Over half of respondents chose to cast between 5 and 7 of their available votes (the total being 10).

This more or less corresponds with respondent preferred Senate size, behold:

Forms response chart. Question title: If there was still a Senate Size Election, what size would you have voted for?. Number of responses: 18 responses.


Only one out of 18 respondents would prefer an 8 person Senate, the rest is distributed relatively evenly across the 5-7 range.

If we're to believe our respondents, this is not a result of deliberate strategy, as the overwhelming majority of respondents indicated they did not take expected Senate size into account when casting their votes:

Forms response chart. Question title: What was your voting strategy as it pertains to Senate size?. Number of responses: 18 responses.



As for newcomer opportunity, a third of respondents did not care for experience in general, but of those who did, far more indicated they were more willing to give newer people a shot in the Senate:

Forms response chart. Question title: Were you more or less inclined to vote for fresh faces this election?. Number of responses: 18 responses.



That's all for now! I eagerly await the reactions of my good panelists @upc and @Rand!
 
I'd like to invite the author of the Elections Act rewrite @Rand to provide us with some comments on the current ongoings! Rand, what is your perspective on the campaigning period with a grand 10 candidates and the subsequent first moments of the polls opening with the Approval Voting changes? What should we take away from the activity in the election so far, and are the results so far what you were expecting?
I couldn't have asked for a better first trial of our new Elections Act. I'm very pleased with the slate of candidates, they're all highly qualified, and the turnout so far looks great. Hopefully, this is a sign that approval voting is a better experience for candidates, not just voters. Assuming there are no surprises in the remaining hours of the election, I'd say this is a success for approval voting. Though, I am a little surprised that with such a strong turnout, we are very close to a 9 person Senate.
 
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No doubt a grand 10 candidates has broad implications for the activity of our region generally. I'd like to ask @upc how he feels about the grand increase in candidates this election, and the results so far!
I'd say that the number and quality of the candidates in this field is a very pleasant surprise. This is the largest Senate election that we have seen in a while, and is a solid mix of experienced players along with some new faces. I expect that whatever the outcome of this election, the next term in the Senate will be a pretty exciting one. Some of the results here are a little surprising to me, and in particular I expected GOTVing to have a much stronger effect in such a crowded field. I only received 3 GOTV messages, though, and even with that, it looks like not everyone who put in the effort to GOTV will make it into the Senate this term. Also surprising to me is current Speaker Cordova's performance -- as it stands right now, it looks like he will barely eke into this next Senate with a 0.9% majority. This comes in spite of a number of late endorsements in Cord's platform, something which I think is unique to his bid this term.
 
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I am certainly also surprised at the turnout and the lack of GOTV having only received one myself. Cordova's platform and performance is also very surprising. This could certainly be a wake up for Cordova and others.
 
And so the election concludes, thank you to all the panelists for their commentary! Congratulations to our 7 Senators elected: Andusre, Rand, Calvin, Sopo, Cordova, Sanjurika, and John Laurens!

The exit poll has garnered 27 responses, so I'll post the updated charts now:

Forms response chart. Question title: How many candidates did you vote for?. Number of responses: 27 responses.


Forms response chart. Question title: If there was still a Senate Size Election, what size would you have voted for?. Number of responses: 27 responses.

Forms response chart. Question title: What was your voting strategy as it pertains to Senate size?. Number of responses: 27 responses.

Forms response chart. Question title: Were you more or less inclined to vote for fresh faces this election?. Number of responses: 27 responses.
 
For those who are curious. If the results of the Exit Poll had been consistent with the results of a hypothetical Senate Size Poll, 7 Seats still would have won due to the process for deciding tiebreakers in Senate Size.
 
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