Election results can be ignored?

[Muhu]

Some parts of the reddit infodump post stuck out to me:

• You can invite Interest Groups into your government. The ones that aren't part of your government will be in Opposition. You can never make everyone happy so you have to choose which groups to champion.
• When you hold elections, each Interest Group receives Votes from the enfranchised POPs that support it, which increases their Clout by a set amount per Vote until the next election.

Along with the screenshot of the politics screen which shows that the previous election was won by the intelligentsia, followed by the petite bourgeoisie. Yet the goverment doesn't contain either of these parties.

So if I understand correctly the only effect of elections is an increase of the Clout of the interest groups that have done well. However the winners don't automatically get to be part of the government, as you select your governent manually. It seems like you can completely ignore the election results and just pick whatever interest groups you want, although you will probably get penalized for picking ones with low Clout.

This is something you would expect to see in semi-constitutional monarchies where there are elections, but the king retains the right to form his own government. However it really shouldn't be the thing in constitutional monarchies (HM's government, like in the screenshot) without it resulting in a major political upheaval and probably an outright revolution. This was already a problem in Vicky 2 and I hope it doesn't get ported over. And needless to say it shouldn't be a thing in republics either. We don't have any information on how elections work in those yet, but let's hope it's different.

 

[orielense]

Yes, I thought the Vic 2 elections system was very counter-intuitive and unrealistic. But at least it had parties. If there are no parties in Vic 3, but only 'interest groups', it's hard to imagine what it is trying to simulate politically. Do the interest groups correspond to parties? If so, how? If not, what are they supposed to represent in the context of elections. Hopefully, all this will eventually be explained.

 

[Keinwyn]

Define "won". They might have topped the poll, but getting 20% of the vote isn't winning an election.

I would guess that if a democracy's govt doesn't include interest groups that total near 50% clout then they will have legitimacy issues.

 

[DiePie]

the problem here is argument of how much autonomy should be given to the player? Like being screwed over because you built up a strong state-owned industry and then the liberals take over and it all gets sold off is not fair to the player, but allowing the player to decide the results of an election basically without consequences removes the historical and real-world accuracy this game is supposed to uphold.

 

[Somberg]

Yeah I was just thinking about this exact point. It seems like in democracies all that elections serve to do is tell you what percentage of the electorate belongs to each interest group and can increase or decrease their clout in the government depending on how many votes it has but that's about it. This is just a completely bizarre idea if it just allows you to ignore election results and put whatever groups you want into the government in a form of government where doing so would likely lead to unrest and possibly revolt. Like the point of a democracy is so that the will of the people (expressed through those who can vote) is represented but if you can just ignore it without a penalty then what is even the point of having democracies in the game other than to increase the clout of otherwise underrepresented groups?

I guess you would probably be required to put into government enough interest groups so that their clout is at or above 50%. However then you could end up with issues if you are forced to put ideologically opposed interest groups into the government in order to reach this threshold, then you'd end up with legitimacy issues still because all these groups would be hard to please.

 

[Zhetone]

it's basically like forming a coalition government in a parliamentary democracy, and you invite the parties to join the government. it doesn't seem like they can say no though, and it doesn't fit certain countries like the U.S. with a head of state directly elected and no party "government". But I guess we'll see how it works...

 

[klingonadmiral]

Monarchies could also ignore election results in Vicky 2.

 

[neusaap]

Minority governments can be a thing though. In a genuine democracy the opposition should be able to send the government home at any time through a motion of no confidence however, and an extreme minority government like the one in the screenshot should probably indeed be doomed to be brought down right from the start.

But we have seen only one screenshot. A system like that might well be in place...