The Campaign Trail Game Has Returned.

Some games with attempts to boost 3rd party candidates that you can't actually play as

Here's a 1916 game. Wilson wins the entire Northeast except Maryland, but also loses everything else outside the South, as well as losing Tennessee to Hughes and Oklahoma to Benson, for a 263-258-10 electoral college deadlock (266 were needed to win). Of some note, the socialists go from winning 6% of the vote and 900k votes in 1912 to winning 9.3% of the vote and 1.7 million votes in this year, as well as winning a state

Here's a 1916 game that basically turns into a three-way split, with Hughes getting 191 EV and 33.7%, Wilson getting 187 EV and 37%, and Benson getting 28.4%

And here's a 1916 game where the socialists win, with 321 EV and 44.8% of the vote

Here's a 1916 game where the prohibition party wins 2 states and gets 18.2% of the vote

Here's a prohibition win

Also, here's a 1948 game where Truman wins but Wallace gets 4.7 million votes, 9.7%, and wins New York

And here's a 1948 game where Wallace gets 27% of the vote and wins 6 states

And here's a Wallace win
How did you do that?
 
... Wow. How.
How did you do that?

Its all about finding the right questions to do the spacebar thing that was mentioned a little earlier in the thread with. Gotta find the ones that boost the third party candidate more than the main opponent. Like in the 2000 election, if you support banning guns, single payer healthcare, and/or abortion rights as Bush, the advisor basically says "wtf" and you lose votes mostly to Buchanan rather than Gore, as well as similar questions for Gore losing votes mostly to Nader rather than Bush, where you can ensure you lose to the third party candidate

For 1912, as either candidate you can boost prohibition and get them to win by simply using the prohibition question and opposing prohibition. To boost the socialists, I used one of the "attack Hughes on preparedness" question and did the "we've taken extensive efforts" answer, which is usually good strategy for Wilson since it gives a bit of a boost to the socialists in most of the nation but also helps swing things towards him a bit in the Northeast - but using this exploit on the question allows for the socialists to get a sizable boost in the rest of the nation while allowing the Northeast to decisively swing for Wilson, which is what allowed for the tie rather than a decisive Wilson loss in the first two of those

For 1948, there's some questions that boost Wallace but boost Truman more, the one that I found that worked to let Wallace win is to use this on the civil rights question and oppose civil rights, the first and second 1948 games where Wallace wins states but Truman wins were done by opposing recognition of Israel

I also managed to do a "Birney or Bust" win in 1848, as Clay by opposing abolition, as well as an election sent to the house with a closer popular vote split with a lesser application of that method

And you could probably also do it with other elections, I imagine both Johnson and Stein could win in the 2016 ones doing this somehow, for example
 
Got this result by spacebarring the option to refute Bernie at the convention then spacebarring on the option for the Hollywood Access tapes
 

Voldemort

Banned
Normal Difficulty 2016 Won popular vote as Trump almost flipped Virginia and Colorado. Oh and Also Flipped Minnesota. Utah had Third party in second place. And Libertarians missed the 5 percent funding threshold by 0.01.
Just went full Populist Abrasive but not completely despicable. Im quite interested in what people think would be result of the result of election like that.
 
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Played with Hillary in 2016 (Easy difficult, no cheats in Inspect Element) just to see how big can the Dems win without cheating. Pretty surprising numbers
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Played with Hillary in 2016 (Easy difficult, no cheats in Inspect Element) just to see how big can the Dems win without cheating. Pretty surprising numbers
That's the original 2016 one, right, not the newer one?

In the original one, it is a lot more possible to get landsides in either direction, though also a lot more reliant on luck in getting the right questions and avoiding the bad ones. It is actually possible to do quite a bit better than that, without any cheat/exploit stuff

Here's my best win so far, with a popular vote margin of 21.4%, Clinton beating Trump 59.3-37.9, with a raw vote margin of 28.1 million votes, 77.8 million for Clinton and 49.7 million for Trump. A margin of nearly 7 million votes more than yours, which is already a pretty damn big landslide. And with 7 additional states won (the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, South Carolina, and Mississippi) for a 477-61 EV win

Kinda crazy comparing it to the OTL 2020 numbers tho, Clinton in this win, despite having such a massive margin, only wins half a million more votes than Biden's got with his pretty narrow win. A really massive turnout disparity
 
To keep your guys hopes up I’m gonna bet that tomorrow they will release 2020 or maby even Christmas they will add more elections I’m gonna comment everyday until I go crazy
 
Just got my best Clinton win on easy with the newer 2016. With a popular vote margin of about 12.3%, Clinton beating Trump 53.4-41.1, with a raw vote margin of 16.7 million votes, 72.7 million to 56 million. And an electoral vote of 421 to 117, with Clinton winning all the Obama 2012 states plus Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and (ever so narrowly) South Carolina. Can't get landslides as big as on the original 2016 one, but that's still a pretty big win

And this was done by running as moderate/right wing/apolitical as possible, doesn't look like running a progressive leftward campaign works as well even on the newer 2016

Also, on a different note, I think it is kind of interesting looking at the "state summary" section for the different major issues - it doesn't necessarily matter a huge deal in terms of gameplay, you can do better in various states with an appeal that isn't directly pandering to those issues, and its not necessarily that the assignments the game gives are necessarily wrong, but I think it is interesting, for example, seeing the 2016 election where a number of different states are either "moderate" or for "open markets" on the issue of trade and then there's Michigan as the one single state sticking out as "protectionist"
 
And this was done by running as moderate/right wing/apolitical as possible, doesn't look like running a progressive leftward campaign works as well even on the newer 2016
That's...not really supported by the evidence. :( A shame, this site's usually pretty good about researching the elections portrayed.
 
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