The 2024 US Election - the game

 John had already run a game on the selection of President Biden successors, so it seemed logical to do one on the election. By great skill and planning we managed to run it on election night itself and the following day. Part 1 covered the campaign and election, while Part 2 covered the aftermath of the election results. 

It was run as a matrix/committee game for half a dozen  players or more. Sadly on the day we were short on numbers, so Micheal played Donald Trump, Mark was JD Vance and Elon Musk, while I was Kampala Harris, Waltz and Joe Biden. It is quite hard work running multiple characters at once! 

The game was structured in the same way as our other political matrix games. I'm afraid these aren't very photogenic however. The key to the whole thing this time was rather daunting spreadsheet below.

This listed all the states, their projected shares of the vote and calculations showing the impact on the electoral college, Congress and Senate elections. 

Player actions could impact the vote shares in individual states as well as the overall national vote share, as well as the other impacts of their actions. While this sounds rather dull, in fact it was very exciting and we all spent much of the game peering at tiny percentage splits in the critical swing states. I felt like Toby in "The West Wing".  It also helped develop a much better understanding of how the US electoral system works, and safe to say, it has just as many oddities and idiosyncracies as ours. Many of these are to do with the various compromises agreed between the States and the Federal Government about who has power to do what. 

I won't bore you with a blow by blow account in the absence of photos, but just a quick summary. In the campaign phase (the first 10 turns or so) both sides deployed most of their resources to campaigning in the swing states with Musk and Biden focussing on national issues. Various mishaps happened along the way, including the inevitable (failed) assassination attempt on Trump, which was a catastrophe for the Democrats as it boosted his standing considerably. However come election day, Harris squeaked in with a majority of the popular vote and wafer thin majorities in the two of the key swing states, 274 plays 262. The thing which swung it was the overall national vote thanks to a good Biden campaign, whereas Musk was lacklustre at best. It was just enough to tip the swing states over the margin.

Some of the majorities were fractions of a percent, to both sides, and in the post election phase (turns 11 to 18 or so) we had various re-counts. The critical state turned out to be Nevada, 6 electoral college votes, Democrat by 0.10% The state house was blockaded by Proud Boys, the National Guard escorted the electors inside but one of them cast their vote for the Republicans and not the Democrats, a 'faithless elector'. In the end the result was allowed to stand rather than inflame the situation further, which still left the Democrats on 273 when it was time to count the votes in the Capitol. 

JD Vance pulled a blinder however, and moved that the entire Nevada vote should be discounted due to the faithless elector. This would take the Dems down to 269, and require the house to vote on who get to be President. A brilliant move on Vance's part, as although the Dems had the majority of Congress seats, the Presidential vote is by State. The Republicans had a big majority of states.

The motion fell however, and Kamala Harris was duly elected President.

What a great game, very clever indeed and utterly absorbing.  It also demonstrated how tiny swings in the vote could make a huge difference to the electoral college votes, and the uselessness of wargames as predictive tools. Obviously irl it turned out the polls were miles off and Trump swept the board. "Its the economy stupid" as Reagan famously quipped, and this time "the border" as well. Something Kier Starmer might want to keep in mind for 2029.