Politics affects lives and politics are complicated
but politics also behave very much like games
you have winners and losers
rules and conventions
Designers and players
and though politics may not be our primary expertise
games are something we know very well
So in this little miniseries, we are going to use gaming terminology and concepts
to help break down and explain the game
Welcome to extra politics
When a particular topic or issue is very important to us
We naturally want to spend more time talking about it.
But in the world of politics, that's not always the best strategy
and today
I'm gonna explain why using two gaming terms
Points and actions
In games, points are frequently used to determine a winner
Whoever has the most points wins
in politics and more specifically in Elections
the points come from you and me in the form of our votes
in presidential elections
It gets a little bit squishier because of state electors and whatnot
But basically it still comes down to our votes
now in game design points come in two different flavors
There are gimmies
and there are marginal points
Jimmies are points that you can't help but get
they just happen as you play for example in Ticket to Ride
Scoring fewer than 50 points would actually take focused effort. It's quite hard to do
so in this case
we could say that Ticket to Ride gives roughly fifty gimme points
and the rest are marginal points and
Since all of the players are going to be getting those gimme points
That means that games are won and lost on marginal points
score the most marginal points and you win
in our highly politicized American system
The majority of votes are actually guineas
at least 80%
Of regular GOP voters are going to vote for whoever the GOP candidate is as will the regular Democrat voters
So those votes are guineas
your vote might be a gimme as well
This means that to win elections
candidates must focus their efforts on the marginal points
meaning the people who haven't decided who they want to vote for yet
or who might not bother to vote at all
and the way
Candidates fight for these marginal points
is by spending time addressing those particular voters
you can think of it like taking actions in a game
in many games
players have a list of
Possible actions they can take
but they must choose how to spend those actions each turn.
For example
Imagine a game where on your turn you can trade goods
collect resources
build new buildings or fight a battle
But you only get two action points
You can do any one of those things,
but you won't be able to do all of those things in a single turn
You're gonna have to make some choices
this exact same dynamic applies in politics
a candidate might choose to spend their action points making calls to
Influential businesses
or going on a tour of schools in their district
or preparing for a debate
But which to choose
in US politics winning the game is priority number one
After all, if a candidate loses the election,
they're not going to be able to achieve any of the goals or changes
They have planned
and when you look at politics from that perspective a lot of politicians actions
start to make a lot more sense
Everything hinges on winning elections.
There is no higher priority
It may not be very inspirational but it is practical
and so the real challenge as a politician becomes
figuring out which path to victory will allow you to achieve at least
some of the good things you want to accomplish
Losing is losing
but in politics there are degrees of victory
For example, you could win by taking huge amounts of lobbyist money to dramatically out spend your opponent
But that might leave you trapped for an entire term doing the bidding of those
Lobbyists who helped you win
while your own agenda collects dust in a corner
politics is a tricky game
Let's run through an example scenario involving a specific political issue
It could be any but let's say
Civil rights
civil rights is the fight for equal treatment under the law and in daily life
Sometimes it's a defensive battle
to ensure that people keep the rights they have
and sometimes it's a proactive
Battle like fighting for people who do not currently enjoy equal status
Proactive civil rights movements in the u.s
Started by addressing large populations
such as the fights to get women and African Americans the right to vote
more recent movements have largely addressed
smaller populations
the long struggle for gay marriage rights led to a victory that directly affected a lot of people
But a smaller number then was impacted by the suffragette movement
For example
now obviously just because a smaller
percentage of the population is suffering an injustice does not make the fight for those civil rights any less important or
morally right
Civil Rights is an issue. That is very important to us here
But for the specific purposes of this video and to better understand the political game
Let's put the morality aside for just a moment
and look at civil rights
purely in the context of winning elections
Let's look at this graph.
Let's say that this circle represents a single issue
and the colours represent all the voters
Who care about that issue
the red chunk represents conservative voters
the blue represents liberals
and the orange chunk surrounding it
Represents all the marginal voters
as you probably have already guessed those red and the blue votes in the middle.
Those are the guineas
They are important votes, but in terms of political strategy those votes might as well not even be in play
They're pretty much unchangeable
So let's just remove those from the board for now
that delectable orange circle remaining
Those are the marginal votes
the undecided
the might not vote at all
These are the votes that each candidate stands to win if they invest actions addressing this particular issue circle
But that's just one issue
one of many
Let's bring the other issues in here and just the orange marginal voter chunks with all of the gimmies removed
this right here
This is the real game board
as a politician in a democracy
This is how you view an election
granted in real life few voters
fit entirely into just one circle
But let's keep this simple for now
as a politician you can spend an action to address one of those circles
Telling that particular group of marginal voters where you stand on their issue and
on a more esoteric level
Acknowledging that their issue is important to you
Even if you don't offer up a solution or a plan for that issue
You are still showing those voters that you get them by acknowledging that their issue is important now
Candidates would love to address each and every issue on this board,
but action points are limited
you've only got so many turns and so many resources
so tough calls have to be made
and while sometimes
candidates invest action points on their gimmies in the hope that the gimmies start performing action points on their own
the fact remains that
Elections are won and lost on the margin voters.
So that has to be the focus
There are many common strategies for spending these action points in an election.
For example
Strategy number one
target the largest marginal voter circles.
This one's a classic
is the economy lagging
Well, then spend some action points addressing the economy
I mean, hey, everybody's affected by the economy
and that means a lot of marginal votes right for the picking
Strategy number two
grow one of the circles
if there's an issue circle where you have a particularly
Potent argument and a high chance of victory
you could spend some points
trying to make more people care about that issue
adding more marginal votes to that circle in the
2016 election Donald Trump spent a lot of action points growing the
previously tiny fear of
Refugees circle because he felt that that was a circle he could easily win
and that strategy turned out to be pretty effective
But elections aren't single-player games
You are playing against opponents
and that leads to other potential strategies like
strategy number three
Force your opponents to spend their action points poorly
So I mentioned civil rights before
let's take a look at that civil rights circle and let's put the gimmies back in for a moment
Hmm
seems like most voters have their minds
pretty well made up on that issue
Not a lot of marginal votes to be won there
If you are a liberal candidate and you look at this circle,
you will most likely deduce that
This is not a very smart place to spend your action points,
of course civil rights may be incredibly important to you
But you need to be pursuing marginal votes if you are going to win this thing and be able to do anything
Okay
But what if you're a conservative candidate
at first you might look at this and think yikes
Barely any marginal votes and the Liberals have this circle on lock
not even worth trying
But wait
What if you were to spend a few action points here by say?
taking an opposing stance to a current civil rights movement
whether you do that directly by say supporting a bathroom bill or
Indirectly through dog whistle tactics
you might manage to shock the liberal majority of gimmies in that circle
who will then?
Demand a liberal response.
Hey, they'll shout
are you gonna let them get away with that?
And this will pull in the liberal candidate and
force them to spend some action points on a circle
They already had in the bag
the end result
You spent one or two action points on this issue
But the Liberal candidate was forced to spend dozens in response
and all of that over a tiny sliver of marginal votes
This strategy often looks
pretty absurd from the outside
But in the world of politics
attacking where your opponent is strong can be surprisingly effective
Of course, there are effective ways to spend action points actually addressing civil rights
You could grow that circle by drawing more people's attention and sympathy to the issue
But due to the shrinking number of people directly affected by modern civil rights movements
Those strategies are more challenging than ever to pull off
but that leaves us in a pretty tough position
How do we reconcile the strategic imperative of winning elections?
With the moral imperative of fighting for an equal world
or whatever your personal pet issue might be
well luckily
elections aren't the only battlefield in politics.
The United States of America isn't a sit down and shut up, you lost
kind of democracy
We are in this 24/7
even outside the election cycle a civil rights activist can always
push whoever is in office to take action
Exactly how to go about this will probably require a few more episodes to cover.
I hope that you've enjoyed this
Look at American politics through the lens of game design
and I hope that you will join us for the rest of this little series
Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time
♪ "Article 11" by Sean and Dean Kine ♪