A Presidential Election Game

1
A Presidential Election Game

• R Loui
• Saumya Garg

2
Why?

• Notoriety
• We thought of it
• Journalist asked about it
• Modeling Exercise
• Future Consulting
• Online Gaming Revenue?
• Automated Play (AI component)

3
Idea

• Web-based two player game to win a majority in
  the electoral college
• State-by-state margins
• Actions include resource allocation spending,
  visiting, issue-adopting
• Stochastic modeling of opinions with and without
  actions
• Should be playable even as detail is added
• Simulations and Scenarios

4
Example
5
Example
Make margin and trend Available, with distortions
of actual, Based on polling resource allocations
6
Example
Make state transitions based on Resource
allocation actions (according to what model?)
Extend time series data (according to what
model?) Even without actins
7
Nuances

• How to integrate issue logrolling?
• How to model differences in malleability of
  opinion?
• How to take counties into account?
• How to get data showing dependencies and
  state-by-state variations
• Start with historical voting data
• Use polling data from recent elections

8
HELP Wanted / Brainstorming

• Need someone who can find data online
• Web interface actually trivial
• Literature on elections for modeling ideas?
• Spreadsheet the voters by categories.
• Single issue voters
• Polling actions to build spreadsheet.
• 20 questions for issue dependency discovery
• Adding more stages running mates issues.
• Block votes
• Habituation/Burnout
• Voter Polarization
• Census Dynamics

9
First prototype

• More you spend the better you do
• Diminishing returns
• Unswayable voters