Polling the Alliance Elections

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
It's interesting reading https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/5bac969054d6c461d2776d68 from a BGS perspective, as Frontier have clearly lined the three candidates up to represent one of the three non-criminal faction ethoses. Beck is Social, Silva is Corporate, and Kincaid is Authoritarian. I can't find any information on how the President is elected - the old post on governments at https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/225156-Governments-and-politics-in-Elite-Dangerous doesn't even mention the position.

I don't know how Frontier intend to determine who wins, but one interesting BGS-focused way would be to use the relative strengths of the factions of those ethoses within the Alliance. There's a few ways to model this since they haven't said how the President is elected - A or D seem most likely to me, though with Lave still getting representation on the Council of Admirals, B is also a possibility:
A) one citizen one vote, all population of Alliance-led systems, regardless of what faction they're presently supporting
B) one citizen one vote, all supporters of Alliance-aligned factions, regardless of which system they're in
C) one citizen one vote, all supporters of Alliance-aligned factions in Alliance-led systems only
D) elected by Assembly (who are roughly proportionate to system population), who will vote from Alliance-led systems according to their own preference based on the nature of the controlling faction that appoints them

...and based on the current influence data from EDDB's nightly dump, that gives polling as:
---> Model A
Social....... : ..149,510,374,609 (30%)
Corporate.... : ..209,709,224,082 (42%)
Authoritarian : ..121,721,479,528 (24%)
Criminal..... : ...17,571,270,111 (4%)
---> Model B
Social....... : ..114,725,562,809 (35%)
Corporate.... : ..132,687,644,849 (40%)
Authoritarian : ...82,021,184,745 (25%)
Criminal..... : ......848,071,055 (0%)
---> Model C
Social....... : ...98,983,033,712 (33%)
Corporate.... : ..123,077,991,858 (41%)
Authoritarian : ...74,012,212,708 (25%)
Criminal..... : ......835,494,274 (0%)
---> Model D
Social....... : ..141,952,935,341 (28%)
Corporate.... : ..248,806,181,107 (50%)
Authoritarian : ..107,686,470,081 (22%)
Criminal..... : .......66,935,057 (0%)


So at this stage, Silva looks to be very definitely the favoured candidate ... even more so with the Assembly than the general population, but ahead with both - with Kincaid perhaps getting his wish for a stronger presidency, but being unlikely to be the person who occupies it in future.
 

Misaniovent

Misaniovent
Pretty sure FD retconned the Alliance presidency. Otherwise, great thread.

From FD newsletter:

The Alliance formed from a number of culturally different systems with a unified goal – to provide a stronger voice in the galaxy for its member systems and ultimately to defend them against unwelcome attention from the big powers. [The Independent Alliance is culturally very varied and leadership of the Alliance][ (the presidency] moves between member systems annually) has been described as ‘challenging’. Seeking agreement between the member systems is generally a tortuous process, usually ending up with a great deal of compromise.
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From ED Wiki:

The President of the Alliance of Independent Systems is the head of state of the Alliance. The presidency is a largely ceremonial office that moves between member systems annually.[1] Limited by the Alliance constitution, Alliance Presidents have practically no executive power compared to the Alliance Prime Minister and can only serve for up to two one-year terms. The incumbent Alliance President is Gibson Kincaid, who is running for re-election in October 3304.[2]


Alliance leadership is a complex interlocking of systems, committees and power-sharing which some see as a limit on the Prime Minister's influence.[3]
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Mangal Oemie

Mangal Oemie
#Fazia3304

Fazia should win, but the way the media reports have been going, it looks like the incumbent and increase-my-power Gibson Kincaid is being set up to prevail.

Fazia Silva's power base is at the borders, not in Alioth, and her rumored relationship with the diplomats concerns some of the "don't rock the boat" power interests in the capitol.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
I would assume, from the wording on Galnet, that it's a universal sufferage voluntary election throughout Alliance territory. But "Alliance territory" is fuzzier than a simple control-of-system thing.

Are there many instances of Alliance-owned assets (space stations, etc) embedded in non-Alliance-controlled systems? Logically, those Alliance citizens should also get a vote, though scouring near-Alliance space hunting them all down would be a statistician's nightmare, unless Inara or some such tool can do that crunching for you. Likewise, any "bubbles" of non-Alliance-controlled territory inside Alliance-controlled systems should not count towards Alliance voting, since they're not part of the Alliance. The main trouble with this is, that the population division within star systems, broken down by planet and space station, is still a secret statistic, and is likely to remain so until all inhabited planets are landable. Logically, we're only talking about relatively small numbers though, which shouldn't affect the likely result.

Part of the "problem" with modelling the internal structures of the superpower governments in ED, is that any 21st-century-earth parallel we might try to impose cannot take into account the reality of the rapidly changing political landscape of the ED BGS. For example, the Alliance is often compared to the EU, but the 21st century European Union is in enough of a crisis with a single member attempting to secede (Brexit), and membership applications take a decade or so to process; imagine the EU trying to deal with ten new membership applications a month, plus several secession bids, all happening simultaneously and all expecting resolutions within a couple of weeks. If that happened to the 21st century EU, they'd blow the entire EU budget just trying to keep up with rearranging the seating in the European Parliament. The Alliance bureaucracy must have learned to be much more nimble and rapid-responding than the 21st century EU.
 

DNA-Decay

DNA-Decay
This whole thing is a farce.

Where is player agency?
It should be Vectron, Mangal, Crashbox, and Texas Pete in a nude mud wrestling no-holds-barred fight to the death; or the whole thing is pointless.

And anyways linking back to population might be problematic with Lave potentially holding the balance of power depending how this month goes.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Sapyx said:
I would assume, from the wording on Galnet, that it's a universal sufferage voluntary election throughout Alliance territory. But "Alliance territory" is fuzzier than a simple control-of-system thing.
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Yes. Even allowing for the speed-up of political actions for game purposes, the concept of partial control gets very messy. All of the political structures fit much better with the FE2/FFE model where the minor factions were too low-level to be mentioned and systems just had a superpower alignment which changed rarely.

Bearing in mind that Alliance citizens living elsewhere may be able to cast a postal vote, maybe model B is better anyway, though.

Sapyx said:
Are there many instances of Alliance-owned assets (space stations, etc) embedded in non-Alliance-controlled systems? Logically, those Alliance citizens should also get a vote, though scouring near-Alliance space hunting them all down would be a statistician's nightmare, unless Inara or some such tool can do that crunching for you. Likewise, any "bubbles" of non-Alliance-controlled territory inside Alliance-controlled systems should not count towards Alliance voting, since they're not part of the Alliance. The main trouble with this is, that the population division within star systems, broken down by planet and space station, is still a secret statistic, and is likely to remain so until all inhabited planets are landable. Logically, we're only talking about relatively small numbers though, which shouldn't affect the likely result.
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It's possible to approximately calculate the population managed by a procedurally generated station using the Hydrogen Fuel commodity market, and they could be found through the EDDB dump easily enough, but it probably wouldn't change the distribution enough to matter - the EDDB data is already a mix of current and weeks old, so the numbers are already approximate, and there's probably about as many independent/federal enclaves in alliance space to cancel it out.

DNA-Decay said:
And anyways linking back to population might be problematic with Lave potentially holding the balance of power depending how this month goes.
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It's big, but it's not that big. Model B - the closest one - already accounts for most of those potential voters anyway. Model A - the one most dependent on system control - the Alliance could run up a 95% influence for its social factions in the system (though not before polling day it couldn't...) and still not close the gap between Beck and Silva.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Ian Doncaster said:
...and there's probably about as many independent/federal enclaves in alliance space to cancel it out...
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That does depend on how the Alliance is expanding, and where. I haven't really been following as ardently as the Alliance BGS players have; overall, what is the expansion strategy, when it comes to expanding into large, multiple-asset systems? Is it to dash in, plant the green flag, and move on to the next system, leaving the rest of the stations in that system alone, or is it to systematically continue to cause wars within the system and claim all or most of the major starports in that system before moving on?

It might be important if, as I suspect, it is (for the most part) the former strategy - most expansionist Alliance factions are overstretched into multiple systems and the BGS manipulators aren't going to want to waste too much time on redundant, non-expansionary wars. Which would in theory leave large chunks, perhaps even the majority of system inhabitants in some cases, outside of Alliance territory.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Sapyx said:
It might be important if, as I suspect, it is (for the most part) the former strategy - most expansionist Alliance factions are overstretched into multiple systems and the BGS manipulators aren't going to want to waste too much time on redundant, non-expansionary wars. Which would in theory leave large chunks, perhaps even the majority of system inhabitants in some cases, outside of Alliance territory.
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Certainly for the question of "how many Alliance citizens are there" it's an important point and it wouldn't necessarily cancel out. It's very inconsistent in-game whether an Alliance station in a Federal system represents actual Alliance territory or simply a facility managed by an organisation other than the station controller, though - that could plausibly be argued either way.

But since "factions in Alliance systems", "Alliance factions" and "Alliance factions in Alliance systems" all give basically the same percentages between the three ethoses, I suspect the effect doesn't fundamentally change the balance with respect to the election.

EDDB data is too patchy to check this sort of thing reliably - the system data is mostly pretty recent but the station data can be months out of date - but for it to make a difference it would need Social or Authoritarian Alliance factions to be substantially more likely to consolidate their systems than Corporates.

(Since wars cut short expansions, consolidation and rapid expansion aren't necessarily completely in conflict)
 

Mangal Oemie

Mangal Oemie
Sapyx said:
That does depend on how the Alliance is expanding, and where. I haven't really been following as ardently as the Alliance BGS players have; overall, what is the expansion strategy, when it comes to expanding into large, multiple-asset systems? Is it to dash in, plant the green flag, and move on to the next system, leaving the rest of the stations in that system alone, or is it to systematically continue to cause wars within the system and claim all or most of the major starports in that system before moving on?

It might be important if, as I suspect, it is (for the most part) the former strategy - most expansionist Alliance factions are overstretched into multiple systems and the BGS manipulators aren't going to want to waste too much time on redundant, non-expansionary wars. Which would in theory leave large chunks, perhaps even the majority of system inhabitants in some cases, outside of Alliance territory.
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Depends a bit on the player group, but we tend to go for as many assets as possible.

This is why Wolf 406 Transport & Co controls over 120 assets or so, even though it is by no means the biggest faction in the game in systems controlled.


kVgkVjK.png


But in general, this is a pattern that holds. Bottom right in the next chart shows that Alliance PMF factions own significantly more assets than other allegiance factions, and that pattern even holds for non-PMF Alliance factions. Alliance factions also control more systems per faction than their peers. (population controlled - counted as entire population of every system controlled - is even more extreme)

wF0CoNC.png


Lots more where these came from in https://imgur.com/a/gATioNH
 
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Sentenza

Sentenza
I already stated my opinion in another thread: the Alliance is scripted to become authoritarian to complete the symmetrical 3-way dystopia, therefore Kincaid will win.
 

Mas s_1nhibited

Mas s_1nhibited
Sentenza said:
I already stated my opinion in another thread: the Alliance is scripted to become authoritarian to complete the symmetrical 3-way dystopia, therefore Kincaid will win.
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alot of alliance players would feel MASSIVELY betrayed if this were to happen... im tempted to agree however as this will become a good platform for a Turner research plotline.

Yet another push towards doom and darkness (if thargoids, illuminata and unbalanced bgs were not enough)
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Mangal Oemie said:
Prime suspect, Gibson Kincaid.
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He's certainly doing the most to *act* suspiciously about it. But running at a fairly distant third in the polls he'd be unlikely to directly benefit unless he can kill Beck too.

Beck, on the other hand, has clearer political benefits at this stage. And Tashmira Silva, of course, inherits some extremely valuable companies with a choice of two politicians to frame.

Either way, the outcome is going to depend far more on events - and which suspect early blame can be most convincingly pinned to - than on the ideological inclinations of the electorate.

Mangal Oemie said:
Looks like this election is already thrown.
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It would depend a bit on the rules for deaths after the nomination period has closed. In the UK, this leads to postponement and later re-running of the election ... in at least some of the US the dead candidate remains on the ballot with various rules for who takes up the post if they win. "Remove the candidate and carry on as if nothing had happened" is a terrible idea [1], so I'm assuming is what the Alliance has.

[1] As is holding the vote to determine the powers and length of term of a political office simultaneously with the election to that office, of course.
 

Sentenza

Sentenza
Ian Doncaster said:
He's certainly doing the most to *act* suspiciously about it. But running at a fairly distant third in the polls he'd be unlikely to directly benefit unless he can kill Beck too.
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"There has already been speculation that this was a political killing, motivated by Silva’s proposed changes to Alliance financial policy. The entrepreneur also had fierce rivals in the business world."

No need to kill Beck. Just frame him for Silva's murder, because of course he represents the corrupt financial elites that would have suffered from Silva's social reforms, and everyone hates corrupt financial elites...
 

Mangal Oemie

Mangal Oemie
I think it is time to start an investigation that the President has no influence and control over, and possibly the Assembly should suspend him, and start impeachment proceedings should they find anything.

Whatever happens, even if Kincaid gets his second term, he won't get the support of the border lands or the corporates and democrats in the Alliance. Whatever pansy is found, for many in the Alliance, it is clear who is responsible for Fazia's death.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Beck: we should keep taking over the galaxy by stealth like the BGS/Powerplay teams currently are
Kincaid: the Alliance needs military ranks and its own capital ships
 
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