Glance at Prime Minister’s game board and player mats, and the first thing you’ll notice are all the numbers. The most important one is 330: the number of seats you need for a majority in the House of Commons. In this article, we’ll take a look at Prime Minister’s numerical side, with a focus on its measurement of public opinion.

At the heart of the game is an analog computer simulating the Victorian-era British political system. It tracks and links about 30 different political factors, including Parliament’s confidence in each player, each party’s popular support in eight key sectors of the electorate, current election projections, the number of government MPs and their “moderate” or “partisan” inclinations, projected votes on the government’s bills, the “uncertainty” factor in elections and Parliamentary votes, and Queen Victoria’s support for different players. By reducing these factors to numerical values and structuring their relationships, this analog computer decides who gets to lead each party, which party controls the government, and what bills the government can pass. Whoever does the best job of manipulating the factors controls the system and gets an edge in the game.

Here you can see a partial snapshot of Prime Minister’s game board, showing the most detailed part of its analog computer: the eight key sectors of the electorate. They include a mix of geographic, social, and ideological groups: Conservatives, Farmers, the Gentry, Ireland, Liberals, the Middle Class, Scotland, and Workers. You’ll track support for each party in each sector, moving wooden markers up and down the numerical tracks. The side with the blue rosette tracks support for the Conservative Party, and the side with the orange rosette does the same for the Liberal Party. The green circles indicate each party’s starting position in the game’s standard setup. During the game, you’ll encounter icons from bills, events, and actions that tell you when to move the markers up and down a track. By moving a marker up one step, you earn one to three popularity points, depending on the sector and your current position. The popularity points that each party earns in the different sectors are added up, and the total relative point difference between the parties determines projections for the next election.

The eight sectors overlap so that one voter might belong to several different sectors at once. For example, a landowner in Scotland might belong to the Conservatives, Gentry, Farmer, and Scotland sectors. The Conservative Party might win his vote by appealing to his ideological identity as a Conservative, or the Liberal Party might win his vote by appealing to his geographic Scots identity. A sector’s significance in each election varies depending on the parties’ respective strategies. If both parties neglect Farmers, then Farmers will have no significance. But if the Conservative Party maxes out its popularity among Farmers while the Liberal Party earns nothing there, the Farmers sector will weigh heavily in the next election–not only because Farmers prefer the Conservative Party, but because they have been motivated to vote according to their economic interests.

Different sectors have different point spreads, reflecting their importance in the Victorian-era electorate. In this era, most British subjects didn’t have the right to vote, so the point spreads aren’t simply based on population distribution. They’re based on the number of voters and each sector’s overall impact on the election results, factoring in the value of campaign contributions, endorsements, and other means of influence. This is why the Gentry sector has more points than Workers, despite being a much smaller slice of the population.

As the game progresses, parties will reach maximum or minimum values in some sectors. These maximums and minimums affect the game’s strategy and evoke real-life political effects. No matter how strongly Scotland prefers one party over another, Scotland’s impact is limited by the number of voters in Scotland. Once the Conservative Party has maxed out its popularity in Scotland, it can gain nothing more there; it must look for additional points in other sectors while being careful not to rock the boat in Scotland. Conversely, once the Conservative Party has bottomed out in Ireland, it has nothing more to lose there and incurs no further penalty for continuing to neglect the Irish–a circumstance which may become useful. As in real life, the parties and politicians in Prime Minister can’t please everyone all the time. When faced with hard choices, they favor their political patrons and write off sectors that are unimportant to them. If there’s a rail disaster in Scotland, a Conservative Prime Minister (PM) will be forced to deal with it if he wants to retain his party’s support there. But if a problem surfaces in Ireland, the same PM might choose to ignore it and focus on something else, knowing that his party can’t do any worse in Ireland.

In addition to tracking popular support, the sectors also track the public’s mood for partisanship, which in turn can result in “partisan” MPs who support more radical bills. The game board measures public partisanship through “red points” that are printed side-by-side next to the total points for some sectors. Not every sector produces red points. For example, the Middle Class–not known for favoring radicalism–doesn’t generate any red points. At the other end of the spectrum, the ideological sectors (Conservatives and Liberals) produce only red points. Red points are always party-specific. If a sector offers red points, it offers them to one party only. By appealing to Workers, the Liberal Party can earn up to 7 red points, reflecting the support of radical Workers who favor partisan Liberal MPs. The Conservative Party can also earn popularity points in the Workers sector, but can’t earn any red points there because Workers who support the Conservative Party prefer moderate MPs.

Each sector has its own flavor and strategic impact. Both parties are free to pursue popularity in any sector–the Conservative Party may pursue a limited number of points in the Liberals sector, for example–but some sectors have a natural affinity or resistance to a particular party. In pursuing popular support in the different sectors, players have to think not only about the raw number of points they earn, but also the difficulty of holding particular sectors. Scotland has the fewest points, but it’s the most stable sector. Scotland’s interests aren’t directly implicated in the hot-button political issues of the day, so there are no bills that upset the Scots. The Middle Class is equally open to both parties and offers more points than Scotland, but is somewhat harder to hold owing to its more sensitive economic and moral preferences. Players also need to think about maintaining a coherent moderate or partisan strategy. The sectors for Conservatives and Liberals are the richest in points, making them tempting targets early in the game. But appealing to voters’ partisanship results in partisan MPs who favor divisive bills that could come back to haunt you. And if your government is equally split between moderate and partisan MPs, you may have a hard time getting them to agree on legislation.

In standard games, Prime Minister’s framework supports an open-ended format in which players strive to control government, win elections, and pass bills. Different politician abilities and about 200 unique cards ensure that no two games are the same. The same framework also supports specific scenarios that simulate historical problems, like home rule for Ireland or the repeal of the Corn Laws. Automated “Clockwork” politicians can readily function within the game’s system, opening the door to solitaire play.

Players have a wide variety of ways to interact with the game, starting with an action point system that allows you to perform a variable number of actions per turn. Depending on your current player mat and your politician’s fixed abilities, you can campaign to increase your party’s popularity in particular sectors, debate for or against bills, flatter Her Majesty to gain her favor, or influence MPs to make them more moderate or partisan. You can also draw “supporter” cards featuring influential Victorians who perform actions on your behalf. You’ll always have many things to do and not enough action cubes to spend, forcing you to prioritize your actions while anticipating future events. The PM’s response to random events and Parliament’s enactment of important bills have consequences that ripple through the system. The players and parties are in a constant tug of war. Collecting the right supporters, unleashing them at the right moment, and coordinating your actions with other players can help you achieve a breakthrough. But the game is not all about numbers. Relationships between players also factor heavily in the game, particularly in its 3- or 4-player mode. We’ll take a look at the players’ roles and relationships in the next InsideGMT article for Prime Minister.

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