1 · The Goal

You are running for President of the United States. The campaign runs across 26 rounds, moving from the pre-primary season, through the party primaries and nominating conventions, and into the general election. To win you must secure 270 of the 538 electoral votes on Election Night. If no candidate reaches 270, the race is decided by a contingent election in the House of Representatives.

2 · Choosing Your Candidate & the Field

On the Select Your Candidate screen you decide who runs, for which party, and who you control:

• Pick who you play. Click a candidate's logo to configure them. Set their control to Player to take the reins; everyone else is run by the AI.
• Decide who is running. Each candidate can be toggled between running and sitting the cycle out. Only running candidates appear in the primaries and polls.
• Assign parties. Drag a candidate's logo between the Democratic, Republican, and third-party groups to reassign which primary they compete in. You can run as a major-party contender or strike out as a third-party / independent candidate.
• Multiple humans. More than one candidate can be set to Player for hot-seat play; the game cycles the active player each turn.

When at least one candidate is set to Player, the Start Game button unlocks.

3 · Hire an Advisor (highly recommended)

Right after setup you may hire a campaign advisor. This is the single best way to learn the game: throughout the entire campaign your advisor delivers hints, strategic context, and a suggested resource-allocation plan every round — which states to target, which ads to run, which policies to release, and who to attack. You can accept the whole plan with one click or use it as a starting point. New players should always take an advisor; you can still override every suggestion yourself.

4 · Your Turn: Allocating Resources

Each round your turn is organized into three steps. You have 5 personal actions per round (your time) plus your campaign cash (limited only by your bank balance).

Step 1 — Gather Data (Polling)

Buy polls to see where you stand before you commit. Options include national and state polls, policy-approval polls, and a constituency trust poll. Information is cheap compared to wasting a whole round's budget on the wrong move.

Step 2 — Set Your Schedule (Personal Actions)

Spend your 5 actions on high-impact personal appearances. Each has a distinct effect:

• Major Speech ($500k, in a chosen state) — promotes one of your aspects (raising approval / lowering "unsure") and optionally attacks one opponent aspect. It also nudges turnout in that state your way, and the topic you speak on gets emphasized in the media (see below).
• Small Event ($100k, in a chosen state) — a modest, reliable local turnout bump — smaller than a speech but cheap and low-risk.
• Debate Prep ($100k) — before a debate, makes the best answers and safest attacks clearer during the minigame and improves your showing.
• Fundraiser ($100k) — raises your income for the following round; the payoff scales with your national poll standing, so it's worth more as you climb.
• Seek Endorsement (free) — court party endorsers, state bosses, and policy champions. Endorsements convert voters to your side and pay recurring income every round (party endorser ≈ $100k, state boss ≈ $500k, policy champion ≈ $1M each).
• Earned Media (free) — spotlight one policy topic to emphasize it in the national conversation. The number of emphasis points you get scales with your Charisma, so a charismatic candidate shapes the agenda for free.

Step 3 — Invest in Your Campaign (Money)

Cash actions are unlimited so long as you can pay for them. The bigger the audience an ad reaches, the bigger its effect — and its price:

• Ground Game (per state) — organizers that convert that state's persuadable voters into definite turnout for you. The most cost-effective way to bank votes in states voting soon; cost varies by state and is capped per state.
• Positive Ad ($1 per voter reached) — raises approve and lowers unsure on one of your own aspects — a perceived trait or a specific policy. A policy ad is ideology-aware: it lands with the ideologies that like that policy.
• Negative Ad ($1 per voter reached) — drives up an opponent's disapprove on a chosen aspect. Attacking a perceived trait (Strength, Character, Intelligence) also splashes onto their Charisma — but attacks can backfire if you're weaker on the issue than your target.
• Policy Release ($100k) — formally stake out a position on an issue. It sharply boosts approval on that policy for the ideologies that favor it, and undercuts rival positions on the same topic. You can only release a given policy once.
• Communications Team — steadily raises your Charisma approval each round it's staffed.
• Political Team — general campaign capacity used to fund and enable your operations.
• Finance Team — increases the money you raise every round.

Actions you choose in Steps 2 and 3 are queued. Nothing is spent until you press Submit Budget, so you can review and cancel freely first. Need cash back? Reallocate Resources lets you downsize teams or ground game for a 50% refund.

5 · How Voters Decide (the heart of the game)

Every voter belongs to an ideology (from progressive to populist to libertarian and beyond). Whether they approve of you comes down to two very different kinds of trait:

Perceived traits vs. ideological positions

• Perceived traits — Charisma, Strength, Character, and Intelligence. These are how voters see you as a person, and they read the same to every ideology. A likeable candidate is likeable across the board.
• Ideological / policy positions — your stance on the ~15 policy topics. These are judged through each ideology's eyes: a position that thrills progressives may repel populists. Only the policies an ideology actually cares about count toward how that group rates you.

Your approval with a group blends the two, but leans heavily on policy — roughly three parts policy alignment to one part personal impression. Being charming won't save you if your platform is wrong for the voters you need; a perfect platform still benefits from a strong personal image.

Why Charisma is special

Charisma does far more than its share of approval. It powers your Earned Media (more charisma → more free agenda-setting), it's a big part of your debate strength, and it's the trait that catches the splash damage whenever an opponent attacks your other perceived traits. Investing in a Communications Team to build Charisma pays off in several systems at once.

Media emphasis — controlling the conversation

The topics being talked about are weighted more heavily when voters judge you. Speeches, ads, policy releases, debates, and Earned Media all emphasize a topic for a few rounds. If you can make the race about the issues where you're strong, those issues count for more — and your approval rises even if nothing else changes.

From approval to polls to votes

Your approval with each ideology becomes a net approval (approve minus disapprove). Candidates with higher net approval among a group win a bigger share of that group's voters — though even an underwater candidate keeps a sliver of support rather than vanishing. Sum that across every ideology and state and you get your poll numbers. Two important wrinkles:

• Primary polls only count your own party's voters — win over the ideologies that vote in your primary first.
• Turnout matters as much as persuasion. Ground game, endorsements, speeches, and events convert "maybe" voters into definite turnout. A candidate with narrower but more committed support can beat a broadly-liked rival who never banks the votes.

6 · The Primary Schedule

During the primary phase, states hold their contests on a fixed calendar (Iowa and New Hampshire first, a Super Tuesday cluster, and so on). Each contest awards delegates using that state's rules — proportional, winner-take-all, or hybrid. Your job is to build a delegate lead by targeting the states voting soon with ads and ground game. You can review the full calendar from the primary schedule view in-game.

7 · Debates

Debates happen on set rounds — 3, 7, 10, and 15 during the primaries and 21, 23, and 24 in the general election. In the primary phase each party debates separately; in the general it's a head-to-head. Debates are an interactive minigame: you answer the moderator's questions by playing to your strengths and can attack opponents where they're weak — but a poorly chosen attack can backfire. Doing Debate Prep beforehand makes the choices clearer. You may skip a debate, but you'll take a hit to your perceived Strength and collect only half your income that round.

8 · The Convention

After the primaries, each major party holds its nominating convention. Delegates you won are cast in multi-round voting; if no candidate has a majority on the first ballot, trailing candidates are dropped and their delegates redistributed until someone clinches the nomination. Endorsements matter here — they sway how freed-up delegates flow. This is also where you'll lock in your Vice-Presidential pick, which broadens your appeal to the constituencies your running mate is strong with. (Independent and third-party candidates have no convention and pick a running mate directly.)

9 · The General Election

Once nominated, the map resets to a national contest for electoral votes. The final rounds are about the swing states: use the General Election Match-Up map to see projected electoral votes, pour ground game and ads into the states that can flip, and win the closing debates. On Election Night states are called one by one until someone crosses 270 — or, if nobody does, the House decides in a contingent election.