President Forever results thread...

[Erc]

My best result so far as Perot.  Rather slapdash effort on my part throughout, especially as I grew convinced I wasn't getting anywhere.

As usual, of course, I surged in the last weekend and in the last two days before the election, gaining PA and WA.

CA and UT were complete suprises, as I thought Clinton and Bush had them in the bag, respectively--of course, I only won California by 65,000 votes.

Beat Bush in the EV count due to CA and TX, and got a good 24% of the PV.

[Erc]

Ah, good ol' Dynamism:

[Erc]

Obviously, my strategy didn't work:



P.G. Talbott (R): 229, 49%
John Kerry (D): 309, 50%

The PV was actually really close...I was ahead until Kerry won Washington, actually...

Overall, the campaign didn't do so well...bounced back in the last few days (from down 6 in the polls), taking states like Louisiana, Missouri, Hawaii...but it was just too late.

States decided within 5:

Florida: 51.2-48.7
Pennsylvania: 51.2-48.7
New York: 52.3-47.6

Flip those three states, and I win.


Not my best day.

[Erc]

Take 2:

Was down by nine points a week before the election.  Mississippi was a swing state.  Wyoming was looking shaky.  Damned Power 6 scandal just sat there for a couple weeks and wouldn't go away.  And then came the ad blitz.

And here was the final result:



P.G. Talbott (R-NY): 280, 51%
John Kerry (D-MA): 258, 48%

My unexpected win in VA handed me the election.

Closest states:
Maryland: 50.5-49.4 (Kerry camped out here the last couple days)
Rhode Island: 50.5-49.4
California: 50.8-49.1 (I camped out here the last couple days)
Hawaii: 51.5-48.4
Virginia: 51.9-48.0

[Erc]

1992:

Bush v. Clinton v. Talbott v. Marrou

Clinton got hard hit with some ridiculously large scandals early, and was essentially knocked out of the race.

Final Polls:

Bush 35 - Talbott 28 - Clinton 19 - Marrou 4 - Undecided 12



Talbott 270 - Bush 265 - Clinton 3

Talbott with a (rather) secure lead in the electoral vote despite being down 7 in the popular vote--the only "swing" for Talbott is California, which he holds securely over Clinton.

However, due to the collapse of the regular party system, things are still very much up in the air.  There are a lot of undecided voters (12%) going into election day--"Undecided" actually has the lead in two states (DC--why it's D+30, and PA--where Undecided has a 14-point lead over Bush--it should actually be D+20...)

Election Results will be up momentarily...

[Erc]

Well, no big surprises (as usual).



Clinton gained back most of the undecideds in DC...but, thanks to a strong showing by Marrou (who placed 3rd, above Talbott) still only got 64.6% of the vote.

Which means that the strongest state for any candidate in this election was not DC...but Hawaii.  70.6% for Bush.

Final PV Results:
Bush: 46,149,947 (42%): 265 EV
Talbott: 35,268,795 (32%): 270 EV  --WINNER
Clinton: 23,750,972 (21%): 3 EV
Marrou: 4,672,448 (4%).

Despite losing the PV by 10 points, Talbott somehow wins the election.

Perot does well in his states--Bush does much better in his.  The fact that there is only one state won with less than 30% of the vote (MO) in a three-way race like this is telling.

The only reasonably close state that Talbott won (within 7) was Delaware:
Talbott 42.9 - Bush 39.5 - Clinton 17.3 - Marrou 0.1

If Bush had won here, the EV count would have been 268-267-3...with Clinton winning in the House despite polling only slightly better than Perot did in the real election.  Now that would have been a sight to see.

[Erc]

Cool Erc. What is this for? Who's Talbott? What scenario is this?

Just the regular 1992 scenario, with Talbott (Representative from New York, see the PF Contest thread for his stats [essentially, he's me]) substituted for Perot.

[Erc]

Hey I have a Idea. Someone can run like 4 people form here and see what happens.  Like 1 dem 1 rep 1 populist and 1 lib...

I'll try that when I get a chance.

Conservative: PBrunsel/Keystone Phil
Libertarian: John Dibble/Alcon
Liberal: Ilikeverin/Akno
Populist: Al/Cosmo Kramer

How do you change party establishment?

I ran this election, and it didn't work how it was supposed to. Despite having almost twice as much money as the major parties, Al and Dibble got a combined 10%.

PB won 368-170 (I was playing as Verin, I usually get somewhere between 250 and 300 EV's, so it's fair), but Al was basically a huge thorn in ILV's side, costing him a lot of states. It was 47-40-8-2 in the PV.

You go into the President Forever Scenario folder and then open the folder of the scenario you want. You will see a folder labeled parties, open that up. You will see a set of text files with the names, Republican, Democratic, Independent, and Libertarian, on them. Open up the Independent folder first. Scroll down until you see party establishment. Change this number to a 5. Do the same in the Libertarian text file. You can run it like that and see how well they do but to make things more even I would go into the Republican and Democratic text files and make their party establishment rating either 3 or 4. If you don't want to do this, it only takes about 10 minutes, I can send you a modified 2004 scenario that would work with 4 parties.

Assuming, of course, that lowering their establishment rating doesn't make them perform better

[Erc]

My feeble attempt to win as Carter:



The losses in CA and NY hurt--but they wouldn't have mattered anyway.

[Erc]

And then I run the AI against Reagan and this is what happens.

Anderson only got 6% nationwide but pulled 24% in Alaska, causing that odd result.

[Erc]

A new (and much more successful) attempt at 1992.



Bush: 304 EV, 39%
Perot: 176 EV, 32%
Clinton: 58 EV, 27%

A power-20 scandal doesn't help Clinton.  [And, in conjunction with Perot's usual Southern Malaise, explains the ridiculous results down South].

California (and, as a result, the election), is decided by a knife's edge--9,405-vote difference between me and Bush.  Any little bit of activity on my part would have taken the state and thrown it to the house.

California, Ohio (within 2.5%) and Pennsylvania (within 4%) would give me the election.

[Erc]

Playing as Clinton in '92...ran a front porch campaign, using most of my CP's to get endorsements, buy crusaders, get research, and spin the news.

Bush had the distinct advantage throughout most of the campaign (having more than 270 EV's in the bag most of the time), but his campaign collapsed utterly in the last week, having more than -300 mo' by election day.  This was partially due to an ad blitz on my part...but the collapse was everywhere in the country, not just the places I ran ads.  Bush had some scandals, but nothing ridiculous (nothing more than -6)...he just simply collapsed, resulting in a net 10-point (and 250+ EV) swing in the polls in my favor, which only expanded by election day.

Net Result:

All the swing (or heck, even lean) states but Idaho swung heavily against Bush, giving Clinton victories in Connecticut, Louisiana, Idaho, and Indiana, among others.  It was also enough to allow Perot to squeak out a victory in Nevada, a state in which he had never led in polls.  (He'd led in Maine for a time earlier before Clinton took the lead).

Final Result:
Clinton:  51,665,149 (47%):  412 EV   [Last Poll: 41%, 363 EV]
Bush: 33,386,486 (30%): 122 EV        [Last Poll: 27%, 139 EV]
Perot: 24,544,356 (22%): 4 EV           [Last Poll: 18%, 0 EV]

[Erc]

1992 again, as Clinton, in a direct attempt to make Perot win.

Some good headlines....

"Bush comfortably ahead of Perot in polls"  (Clinton, in third, not even mentioned)
A week before the campaign, MD poll:  Bush 26%, Clinton 26%, Perot 5%, Undecided 38%

Day before the election, polls were showing Bush at 39, Clinton at 24, Perot at 25...but with the EV situation much closer (Bush at 290 but falling, Perot at 164 & rising, Clinton at 31)

It wasn't enough in the end, though:

Bush: 44%, 303 EV
Perot: 28%, 196 EV
Clinton: 27%, 39 EV

Closest States:
Connecticut:  Clinton over Perot by .8%  (8 EV)
Maryland: Bush over Clinton by 1.2% (10 EV)

Despite the apparent closeness of WI & MI (which would have deprived Bush of an EV majority) before the election, Bush won both states (& all other states he won, for that matter), by 8 points...the closeness of the EV race was, unfortunately, deceptive.

[Erc]

     I decided to try another hard race, coming off of my landslide victory in 1992.

     I ran as Fremont in 1856. All three candidates were repeatedly rocked with scandals, making for an exciting race. As it came down to the wire, the 149 electoral votes needed to secure a majority repeatedly eluded the brave General Fremont.

Fremont/Dayton, 34%, 140 EVs
Buchanan/Breckinridge, 37%, 100 EVs
Fillmore/Donelson, 28%, 56 EVs

     Congress elected John C. Fremont the 15th President of the United States! Also note that Fillmore lost the only state he actually won in real life.

What's up with SC? The legislature would never elect a free-soiler.

If there are only a couple hundred legislators in the state, that means fewer people you need to bribe to win.