Earlier this week during a broadcast on the looming Presidential race, the panel, including myself, was discussing various potential Vice Presidential picks for various candidates, and I mentioned that almost every pairing, broken down via demographics, has worked in the past. After the broadcast ended, however, I started wondering if that was true. Was there a certain pairing that has had more success than others? Are there some pairings that have never been successful? I set out to answer these questions, but quickly found the work to be monumental and wide-ranging, so I have broken down my analysis into two parts, and am now launching a new series of articles to join the already ongoing series of articles on Honoured Citizens. Maybe if I do enough of these I could make my own table of contents thread. Enough about that, though, you didn't open this article to get my take on newspaper organization. No, you came here to answer the question, "What makes the best ticket in the executive split era?" and now I will begin to deliver.
Let's start with the basics: what's a ticket in the executive era? Any pairing of First Minister/Second Minister (or Deputy First Minister) and Chief of State/Vice Chief of State (or Deputy Chief of State). There will be no analysis of President/Vice President tickets in this article, that'll be in another installment of the series. Next, what does "the best" mean? For the purposes of this article I'm defining "the best" as "has won the most elections". So, if a demographic pair has come close to winning in multiple races I'm sorry, but those efforts, although admirable, won't cut it here.
To further lay out the basics, there have been thirteen successful tickets elected in the executive split era; eight of them on the First Minister side and five for the Chief of State. Here they are in chronological order:
Next, let's set up our demographic groups. I'm going to keep things fairly traditional with these groups and just divide things the way that most polls do. That gives us these demographic groups, which I have named for easy reference later on:
*Active citizenship application meaning they applied for citizenship, then actually started participating in the region. Istillian and McEntire both obtained citizenship a few months before the date I used for them in this analysis, but quickly fell inactive, then applied again and remained active, so I'm using their second citizenship applications as their official day that they joined Europeia.
All right, with all of the basic set-up out of the way, let's dive into the data, beginning with the top of the ticket.
A couple of things immediately stand out from this data. First, we see there are no leaders from the "Baby" group. This makes sense, given what we already know about how long it takes to become President/First Minister/Chief of State from this article from GraV's Europeian Research Institute. Big thank you to GraV, by the way for letting me see his data from that article during the writing of this article, it definitely saved me a lot of time. The next thing we should notice is that the vast majority of our leaders are either "Old" or "Ancient". This trend is present even when separating the data into First Ministers and Chiefs of State, though much more apparent with the latter, which has nobody in the "Newcomer" or "Youthful" categories.
Of course, that is only one half of the coin. Every ticket has a leader and a deputy, to help balance things. Let's look at the data for our deputies' demographics.
The data here paints a surprisingly similar picture to the last set. We see once again that there are no "Baby" representatives, as well as the fact that the vast majority of Deputies are "Old" or "Ancient". Of course, "Middle" puts up a much better showing this time around, at the cost of "Youthful", so if anything we see these Deputies are, on average, slightly older than the tops of the ticket, both as Second Minister and Vice Chief of State. With all of these tickets and their older candidates, it begs the question: which ticket is the oldest?
Forgive me for this brief sidetrack, but we have the data to answer this question right now, so I'm going to do it, and return to the main point of this article right after. To determine which ticket is the oldest, there are a few ways we could go about this. We could simply add the days on the forum together and compare that way, but HEM simply has too many days here and it would throw everything off. No, the way I'm going to answer this question is by looking at things through our handy-dandy demographic groups. I will assign each group a number of points (Newcomer has 1, Youthful has 2, etc.) and then add those points up. That way, HEM, the oldest Ancient, is worth the same amount of points as me, the youngest Ancient, and we can look at these tickets on a relatively even playing field. Okay, let's add up those points and see how our tickets measure up.
That order, since some of the names are cut off, looks like this: Prim/UPC, Pichto/Astrellan, Ist/Hez, Lloen/Sopo, Pichto/Whitmark, Maowi/Sopo, Rand/GraV, Calvin/Dakota, Malashaan/Dax, Kuramia/Aex, HEM/Pichto, Pichto/Aex, and McEntire/Monkey.
Our "youngest" ticket is therefore Prim/UPC with 4 points, while our "oldest" ticket is a four-way tie between Kuramia/Aex, HEM/Pichto, Pichto/Aex, and McEntire/Monkey, each with 9 points.
Does this tell us anything? Not directly, no, but it actually wasn't a total sidetrack, either. This leads us into the final data I'm going to examine in this article: what demographic pairs have had the most success, and which have had the least? We can already see that the tickets almost all skew on the older side of things, but let's just put it all into numbers to see if there's anything else interesting to pull from this data. Now I will present each possible pairing of the 5 demographic groups we've been working with during this article, and sort each ticket accordingly. And remember, order matters. Here we go!
All right, there's a lot to look at here, so I want to narrow things down right away. Look at "Newcomer" and "Youthful" as one group: "Newer", and look at "Old" and "Ancient" as one group: "Older". Looking at the list that way we can see some trends. Namely, it is very rare for the "Newer" group to double down on "Newer". In fact, no winning ticket has done it. Some have come close with "Newer" and "Middle", but none have done "Newer" with "Newer". On the flip side, "Older" doubles down on "Older" all the time. There are 5 tickets that have some pairing of "Old" and "Ancient", with one even having two "Old"! It seems that there is such a thing as too old, however, as there haven't been any successful pairings of "Ancient/Ancient". Middle is left on its own without much to analyze, but it almost always pairs with "Old", only once successfully pairing with "Newer". This confirms what we've seen so far in this article, that the "Older" demographics have more success in general, and a lot more flexibility about who they can pair with, while "Newer" has to rely on "Older" almost every time.
Taking all of this data together, I think we can walk away with the answers to our questions from the start of the article. Was there a certain pairing that has had more success than others? Yes, pairings with older members. Are there some pairings that have never been successful? Yes, any pair without an older member, as well as any pairing with two extremely older members. And there you have it. In my next, and likely final, installment in this series, I will examine the winning tickets before the Split Era to see if these trends are new, or merely continuing from what the previous system had already established. Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, available for campaign consultation.
Let's start with the basics: what's a ticket in the executive era? Any pairing of First Minister/Second Minister (or Deputy First Minister) and Chief of State/Vice Chief of State (or Deputy Chief of State). There will be no analysis of President/Vice President tickets in this article, that'll be in another installment of the series. Next, what does "the best" mean? For the purposes of this article I'm defining "the best" as "has won the most elections". So, if a demographic pair has come close to winning in multiple races I'm sorry, but those efforts, although admirable, won't cut it here.
To further lay out the basics, there have been thirteen successful tickets elected in the executive split era; eight of them on the First Minister side and five for the Chief of State. Here they are in chronological order:
- Rand/GraVandius (FM)
- Lloenflys/Sopo (FM)
- Kuramia/Aexnidaral (CoS)
- Pichtonia/Whitmark (FM)
- Prim/UPC (CoS)
- Pichtonia/Astrellan (FM)
- HEM/Pichtonia (CoS)
- Calvin Coolidge/Dakota [formerly Rachael] (FM)
- Maowi/Sopo (FM)
- Pichtonia/Aexnidaral (CoS)
- Istillian/Hezekon (FM)
- Malashaan/Dax (CoS)
- McEntire/Monkey (FM)
Next, let's set up our demographic groups. I'm going to keep things fairly traditional with these groups and just divide things the way that most polls do. That gives us these demographic groups, which I have named for easy reference later on:
- Less than 3 months in the region(< 90 Days): Baby
- 3 - 6 months (90 - 180 Days): Newcomer
- 6 months - 1 year (181 - 365 Days) : Youthful
- 1 - 2 years (366 - 730 Days): Middle
- 2 - 5 years (731 - 1825 Days): Old
- More than 5 years (> 1825 Days): Ancient
*Active citizenship application meaning they applied for citizenship, then actually started participating in the region. Istillian and McEntire both obtained citizenship a few months before the date I used for them in this analysis, but quickly fell inactive, then applied again and remained active, so I'm using their second citizenship applications as their official day that they joined Europeia.
All right, with all of the basic set-up out of the way, let's dive into the data, beginning with the top of the ticket.
| Timeline | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | First Active Citizenship | Time in Region on Election Day | Election Date/Type | Notes |
| Rand | July 19, 2015 | 1321 days (Old) | March 1, 2019 (FM) | First First Minister |
| Lloenflys | December 20, 2018 | 134 days (Newcomer) | May 3, 2019 (FM) | Defeated Incumbent First Minister |
| Kuramia | July 2, 2015 | 1405 days (Old) | May 7, 2019 (CoS) | First Chief of State, running for reelection after transitioning from the Presidency |
| Pichtonia | April 13, 2016 | 1178 days (Old) | July 5, 2019 (FM) | |
| Prim | January 3, 2018 | 578 days (Middle) | August 4, 2019 (CoS) | |
| Pichtonia | April 13, 2016 | 1241 days (Old) | September 6, 2019 (FM) | Incumbent, running with new Deputy |
| HEM | March 7, 2007 | 4627 (Ancient) | November 5, 2019 (CoS) | First contested Chief of State election |
| Calvin Coolidge | July 3, 2014 | 1964 days (Ancient) | November 18, 2019 (FM) | Election decided by the Senate after a tied runoff |
| Maowi | June 25, 2019 | 220 days (Youthful) | January 31, 2020 (FM) | |
| Pichtonia | April 13, 2016 | 1391 days (Old) | February 3, 2020 (CoS) | First Deputy to win their own term |
| Istillian | July 5, 2019 | 281 days (Youthful) | April 10, 2020 (FM) | Incumbent Deputy from previous term, due to multiple resignations |
| Malashaan | October 1, 2011 | 3138 days (Ancient) | May 3, 2020 (CoS) | |
| McEntire | March 28, 2010 | 3737 days (Ancient) | June 19, 2020 (FM) | |
Of course, that is only one half of the coin. Every ticket has a leader and a deputy, to help balance things. Let's look at the data for our deputies' demographics.
| Timeline | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | First Active Citizenship | Time in Region on Election Day | Election Date/Type | Notes |
| GraVandius | June 29, 2015 | 1341 days (Old) | March 1, 2019 (FM) | First Deputy First Minister (later renamed Second Minister) |
| Sopo | December 31, 2009 | 3410 (Ancient) | May 3, 2019 (FM) | Defeated Incumbent First Minister |
| Aexnidaral | March 29, 2010 | 3326 days (Ancient) | May 7, 2019 (CoS) | First Elected Deputy Chief of State |
| Whitmark | February 21, 2018 | 499 days (Middle) | July 5, 2019 (FM) | |
| UPC | April 10, 2019 | 116 days (Newcomer) | August 4, 2019 (CoS) | |
| Astrellan | March 11, 2019 | 179 days (Newcomer) | September 6, 2019 (FM) | Incumbent, running for first full term after being swapped in during the previous term |
| Pichtonia | April 13, 2016 | 1302 (Old) | November 5, 2019 (CoS) | First contested Chief of State election |
| Dakota | December 30, 2017 | 688 days (Middle) | November 18, 2019 (FM) | Election decided by the Senate after a tied runoff |
| Sopo | December 31, 2009 | 3683 days (Ancient) | January 31, 2020 (FM) | First Deputy to win two non-consecutive terms |
| Aexnidaral | March 29, 2010 | 3598 days (Ancient) | February 3, 2020 (CoS) | |
| Hezekon | March 17, 2019 | 391 days (Middle) | April 10, 2020 (FM) | |
| Dax | December 29, 2018 | 492 days (Middle) | May 3, 2020 (CoS) | |
| Monkey | January 6, 2017 | 1260 days (Old) | June 19, 2020 (FM) | |
Forgive me for this brief sidetrack, but we have the data to answer this question right now, so I'm going to do it, and return to the main point of this article right after. To determine which ticket is the oldest, there are a few ways we could go about this. We could simply add the days on the forum together and compare that way, but HEM simply has too many days here and it would throw everything off. No, the way I'm going to answer this question is by looking at things through our handy-dandy demographic groups. I will assign each group a number of points (Newcomer has 1, Youthful has 2, etc.) and then add those points up. That way, HEM, the oldest Ancient, is worth the same amount of points as me, the youngest Ancient, and we can look at these tickets on a relatively even playing field. Okay, let's add up those points and see how our tickets measure up.
Our "youngest" ticket is therefore Prim/UPC with 4 points, while our "oldest" ticket is a four-way tie between Kuramia/Aex, HEM/Pichto, Pichto/Aex, and McEntire/Monkey, each with 9 points.
Does this tell us anything? Not directly, no, but it actually wasn't a total sidetrack, either. This leads us into the final data I'm going to examine in this article: what demographic pairs have had the most success, and which have had the least? We can already see that the tickets almost all skew on the older side of things, but let's just put it all into numbers to see if there's anything else interesting to pull from this data. Now I will present each possible pairing of the 5 demographic groups we've been working with during this article, and sort each ticket accordingly. And remember, order matters. Here we go!
Newcomer/Newcomer
Newcomer/Youthful
Newcomer/Middle
Newcomer/Old
Newcomer/Ancient
Lloenflys/Sopo (FM)
Youthful/Newcomer
Youthful/Youthful
Youthful/Middle
Istillian/Hezekon (FM)
Youthful/Old
Youthful/Ancient
Maowi/Sopo (FM)
Middle/Newcomer
Prim/UPC (CoS)
Middle/Youthful
Middle/Middle
Middle/Old
Middle/Ancient
Old/Newcomer
Pichtonia/Astrellan (FM)
Old/Youthful
Old/Middle
Pichtonia/Whitmark (FM)
Old/Old
Rand/GraVandius (FM)
Old/Ancient
Kuramia/Aexnidaral (CoS)
Pichtonia/Aexnidaral (CoS)
Ancient/Newcomer
Ancient/Youthful
Ancient/Middle
Calvin Coolidge/Dakota (FM)
Malashaan/Dax (CoS)
Ancient/Old
HEM/Pichtonia (CoS)
McEntire/Monkey (FM)
Ancient/Ancient
Newcomer/Youthful
Newcomer/Middle
Newcomer/Old
Newcomer/Ancient
Lloenflys/Sopo (FM)
Youthful/Newcomer
Youthful/Youthful
Youthful/Middle
Istillian/Hezekon (FM)
Youthful/Old
Youthful/Ancient
Maowi/Sopo (FM)
Middle/Newcomer
Prim/UPC (CoS)
Middle/Youthful
Middle/Middle
Middle/Old
Middle/Ancient
Old/Newcomer
Pichtonia/Astrellan (FM)
Old/Youthful
Old/Middle
Pichtonia/Whitmark (FM)
Old/Old
Rand/GraVandius (FM)
Old/Ancient
Kuramia/Aexnidaral (CoS)
Pichtonia/Aexnidaral (CoS)
Ancient/Newcomer
Ancient/Youthful
Ancient/Middle
Calvin Coolidge/Dakota (FM)
Malashaan/Dax (CoS)
Ancient/Old
HEM/Pichtonia (CoS)
McEntire/Monkey (FM)
Ancient/Ancient
Taking all of this data together, I think we can walk away with the answers to our questions from the start of the article. Was there a certain pairing that has had more success than others? Yes, pairings with older members. Are there some pairings that have never been successful? Yes, any pair without an older member, as well as any pairing with two extremely older members. And there you have it. In my next, and likely final, installment in this series, I will examine the winning tickets before the Split Era to see if these trends are new, or merely continuing from what the previous system had already established. Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, available for campaign consultation.
