Foundation Times Exclusive: 1st Senate Elections

Hello and welcome back to another Foundation Times exclusive article on the senatorial election results from the 1st senate elections! The following bulletin will address, in an unbiased manner, the political ramifications of both the senate election results as well as polling results. 

To start things off strong here are the newly elected senators of the 1st senate: 

Arranged in order of vote

Darius III (SPADE) (NLP)

Metalicraft I (NLP)

Neyipitoya (Kimohami) (FoJ)

Lolgod (Independent)

Captain Rex (Grand Galactic Republic) (FoJ)

Analysis: Frankly this election was one of the wilder ones I've seen on this beat. I've covered almost 7 or 8 elections throughout my time as a journalist with Aequitas and now as a journalist with the Foundation. I don't think I've seen results as fascinating as these ones in a while. You might be asking what makes these so fascinating and unique? Well frankly most people came in expecting a strong NLP simple majority (3 of 5 members) with the FoJ coming in second taking a decent minority stake in the senate (likely 2 of 5 members). These expectations were a result of a major recruitment push led by the NLP (which leadership of the FoJ has strongly condemned as a violation of prior agreements but for the sake of making an unbiased article I will not dive into that) which resulted in a largely successful accumulation of numerous members. While NLP members did manage to land in both of the top spots in terms of voting (as you can see above) they did not manage to get their 3rd candidate in. This is in large part because of the independent campaign run by Lolgod. It can be presumed that Lolgod acted as an effective spoiler to the nomination of a 3rd NLP candidate while getting themselves elected in the process. Due to this the entire balance of the senate will likely hinge solely on Lolgod as senators on both sides will likely come down on basic partisan voting lines when it comes to major issues. In order to achieve even a simple majority senators will need to court Lolgods vote. Now if I were in Lolgods position (which is essentially that of political kingmaker) I would feel incredibly confident right about now. I'm going to make the assumption that Lolgod will attempt to walk the middle on most issues in order to receive offers from both parties when it comes to votes. 

Biggest takeaway and question: Who will end up as the chairman of the senate? The largely influential and powerful position's occupant is decided by senators themselves. Senators are only allowed to elect someone from within the senate already. As I said this sets up Lolgod as the most important political piece of any puzzle by far as all that's needed for a successful chairman election is 2 votes from their colleagues and one from themselves.

Prediction: If played right I believe Lolgod would have a shot at becoming the next senate chairman. Who knows though anything can truly happen at this point!

The Following are results from the optional poll

Despite predictions that the FoJ would be completely annihilated or that the unaffiliated bloc would be completely carved up, most of that was somewhat left unsettled. While it is certain that the NLP has reclaimed its former status as the largest party (as I said due to tactics that are heavily contested but cannot be commented on by the paper for the sake of maintaining non-bias) the FoJ has not completely evaporated it seems. This is by far an evolving situation, though, despite our natural tendency to solely look at the two parties I think the future tells us to strictly view those independent numbers. 

Yes, please note that the... green party with the description... that's not a real party so far as I know...

I was pleasantly surprised by the results of this poll. My initial prediction was that we'd see a lot of 7s and 8s in this response but no it seems that AA spirits post merge is as high as ever. While there are a few occasional outliers it is my prediction that such outliers will be inched closer and closer in given time. 

This has always been one of my favorite questions. Not because I like to ridicule the people who have never read our constitution but because it does inspire some hope in me when I see pretty good results like this. For context to all non-foundation members: the constitution is nearly 40 pages long, written by me (yawn), and filled with some denser legal language at times (I even made up a few new legal terms to give some extra headaches). For some extra context the constitution isn't required reading for everyone, though we do expect gov members to have a basic understanding of the thing. Shortened summarized versions for public consumption are still in production. In any case the results of the poll do indicate a higher amount of reading than previously expected. These numbers only rise with time generally. However, it should be noted that those voting and filling out these polls are typically more inclined to be either gov members or pay attention to internal politics a ton. 

I'll make this relatively brief since their ain't much to be said. Despite the expected outlier or two with the addition of well-known gov members and a team that is getting to know each other more and more this result was more or less fully expected. A full vote of approval for our gov team!

Seeing as the post-merger economy is run by a now incredibly effective econ gov team this result was also more or less expected. Another full vote of approval for our excellent econ gov staff!

I will say that this result definitely surprised me a bit. It's rare that you see a post merge group come together this fast and almost entirely support the new culture being established. I believe that a lot of this may have been due to the previous strong cultural ties between the two former AAs. 

Our evolving political culture will definitely remain a gov focus for a while to come but numbers like these are somewhat promising. Even though some people feel slightly lukewarm to the political landscape given time it is somewhat inevitable in my mind that we will achieve full success in engagement numbers in this area. 

On to one of the more exciting statistics that come out of these analysis pieces... the approval ratings for the two interim mayors, Commo and RoManic. 

Approval Rating: ~84.82%

I'm marking this one down as a win between the joint Commo-RoManic interim mayorship as a nearly 85% approval rating puts this one at high numbers even compared to former Aequitas presidential approval rating numbers. Beyond this though I wonder how this will affect the upcoming mayoral races and if any significant challenger can come to the front and overcome a nearly 85% approval rating?

Alright that's all from me folks if you enjoy Foundation Times content, I suggest you join our server here: https://discord.gg/mKmtNDCZzV

Please leave a comment here if you have any questions or concerns or maybe you just want to give us a thumbs up.