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Elections & Voters

Elections turn your voting record into seats. Understanding how electors think is the single most important skill in Lawmaker — everything you do is ultimately judged by them.

How elections work

Elections run on a regular schedule set per legislature (the next date is shown on your country dashboard), and every party participates automatically. On election day, the electors vote, the results are tallied, and seats are allocated proportionally to each party's vote share. A new legislature forms and government formation begins.

Afterwards you'll see each party's vote totals and percentages, seats won, turnout, and the change since last time.

Understanding electors

Your country's population is modelled as a set of individual electors. Every elector has a job, income band, education, housing and religious background, a political worldview, and personal life goals. You can open any elector's profile to see what drives them, and a country's Demographics and Issue Analysis views show the shape of the electorate as a whole.

This is why elections feel real: electors actually read your record and respond to it.

Retirement

Electors retire by age, not by chance. Once an elector reaches their country's retirement age they're shown as Retired, but they keep their working history on record — a profile might read "Retired — formerly a nurse in healthcare" — rather than losing their identity. The threshold itself is just the Pension Age law: raise it and electors below the new age go back to work immediately; lower it (or abolish pensions entirely) and more of the population retires at the next tick. There's no lag or transition — the change is visible the moment the law takes effect.

This has real economic teeth: a country's retired share of the population, shown on the Economy page, moves the labour force and GDP along with it, so pension policy is as much an economic lever as a social one.

How an elector decides

  1. They review how each party voted on proposals.
  2. They compare those votes to their own positions and priorities.
  3. Recent votes count more than old ones — your record is always live.
  4. They form an opinion of each party and vote for the best match.

Example

A committed environmentalist sees the Green Alliance voted for renewables and against coal subsidies, while the Business Party did the opposite. They vote Green — a clear match with their values.

Budgets count too — about 30%

Voters judge you on more than laws. Each elector's view is roughly 70% your social-policy record (laws) and 30% your financial record (budgets) — they react to tax changes in their own income band and to spending shifts in areas they care about. A party that ignores budgets hands a free advantage to rivals. See How budgets affect voters.

Time-weighting

Recent votes dominate: the last 30 days carry the most weight, 30–90 days moderate weight, and anything over a year barely registers. Voters, like real ones, remember what you did lately.

National moods

Beyond individual preferences, a country can carry national moods — trends that shift how voters weigh issues. A mood can push everyone slightly in one direction on certain issues, change how important an issue feels, or both. You'll see active moods on the country page; click one to see exactly what it affects.

Some moods are permanent, baked into a country's character when it's created:

Mood Effect on voters
Traditional Culture ⛪ Toward traditional gender roles and religious influence; away from immigration
Pioneer Spirit 🤠 Toward individual liberty and free markets; away from the welfare state
Common Ground 🫂 Toward the welfare state and worker rights; away from free markets
Stewards of the Land 🌱 Toward environmental protection; away from military strength
Strength through Strength 🗡️ Toward military strength and law-and-order; away from immigration
Citizens of the World 🌍 Toward gender equality and immigration; away from religious governance
Patriarchal Society 👨‍⚖️ Toward traditional gender roles; gender issues weigh more heavily
Deeply Polarised ⚡ No position shift — but every issue matters more to everyone
The Great Disillusionment 😑 No position shift — every issue matters less; elections get noisier

Others are event-triggered and attach automatically when something happens in the game: a Constitutional Crisis (a monarch vetoes a passed bill — see Hereditary Monarchy), or an Economic Miracle / Crash that bends the country's growth rate (see Economy).

When a mood lines up with your platform, it's a tailwind — propose into it. When it's against you, focus elsewhere and wait, since temporary moods pass.

Elector satisfaction

In countries with an economy, each elector also has a satisfaction score: how happy they are with the state of the country, separate from their opinion of any party. It's driven by how your country's finances compare to similar peer countries — mostly the tax rate on their income band (about 70%) and government spending on the issues they care about (about 30%). Tax or spend more favourably than your peers and satisfaction rises; fall behind and it drops.

Satisfaction is a diagnostic, not a direct vote-changer. High satisfaction favours incumbents defending the status quo; low satisfaction opens the door for opposition parties running on change. It shows up on polls, elector profiles, and — when it tips into a notable band — as a mood badge on the country page, and only refreshes when a poll or election happens.

The electoral system

Lawmaker uses proportional representation: roughly, vote share equals seat share (10% of votes → ~10% of seats). Small parties can win seats, no one usually wins an outright majority, and coalitions are the norm. Some legislatures also set a minimum threshold (often ~5%) below which a party wins no seats — check your country's rules.

Party seats ≈ (party votes ÷ total votes) × total seats

Turnout

Not every elector votes every time. Controversial recent proposals and close races push turnout up; long inactivity pushes it down. Party branding matters here: a custom logo gives a +5% turnout boost among your supporters, and going without costs you 5%.

Polling

Any party with an active presence can commission a poll for 10 PP to see projected vote shares, turnout, and seat estimates based on current opinion — a snapshot, not a guarantee, since voters keep reacting to new votes right up to election day.

  • Private polls keep the results to you — good for secret strategy, but you can't share them as proof.
  • Public polls are visible to everyone — useful for building trust with coalition partners and setting expectations.

Any logged-in user can view public polls; only active parties can commission them.

Early elections

A party can trigger an election before the scheduled date for 30 PP (just 10 PP if no party holds seats). It's put to a vote over a 60-day window and goes ahead unless opposition reaches 50%. Leading parties use this to lock in gains; opposition parties vote it down to deny them the moment.

The motion concludes early if the outcome becomes mathematically certain before the 60-day window ends — that is, once yes has secured more than 50% of occupied seats (it will pass), or once yes can no longer reach 50% no matter how remaining votes fall (it will fail). This applies even if votes are still incoming.

Separately, the game calls an automatic early election (no vote, no PP) for any single legislature that empties below 50% occupancy — usually after a governing party is disbanded — holding it 10 game days later so the chamber can be refilled.

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