The party machine

The party machine in Career Mode is not a single meter. It is made up of the real named people of the player's own party in the home state: the party's organisation, its county chairs, and its own sitting legislators and statewide officers. Each of these people is, at any time, a stranger to the player, aware of the player, or someone who has actually met the player, and everyone who knows the player carries their own opinion rather than sharing one number with everyone else.

The chart

The party's chart can be opened from the political class panel on the political scene. It shows the state chair at the top, the party's other officers below, and the regional directors and county chairs below that; either party's chart can be viewed. Anyone who already knows the player is marked out, and clicking on a person opens their card, which shows whether they have never heard of the player, know of the player, or have met the player, and states their opinion of the player in a single word, from hostile to warm.

Getting known, and opinion

People become aware of the player as the player becomes better known, or by actually meeting the player through party activities. A stranger has no opinion of the player at all. From the moment somebody comes to know the player, their opinion starts out reflecting how their part of the party already feels about the player, and from then on it moves with what the player says publicly and, for anyone actually met, with how those meetings go: a cordial meeting improves things, and an argument, more likely between officials and a player from very different wings of the party, damages them. People are met through party activities such as:

• Precinct meetings and phone banks, which reach county chairs
• County dinners, which reach the county and regional levels
• The state convention, which reaches regional, state and elected officials
• Candidate surrogacy and the platform committee, which reach elected and state officials

The party's requests

Every so often, the party issues a request naming a few subjects it would like the player to speak about; what the player actually says about them is entirely up to the player. Speaking to any one of them satisfies the request. Going a long stretch without doing so damages the player's standing with everyone in the party who knows them, and the debrief notes that the party's asks went unpushed until the player addresses one.

What it unlocks

The more of the party's chart knows and thinks well of the player, the more of the party's deeper activities open up, from state convention networking through to starting a political action committee, and the price of fundraising and other party activities also depends on this standing. Filing a candidacy against a sitting officeholder of the player's own party is judged the moment the papers go in: challenging someone the party holds in poor regard can actually help the player, while challenging someone well liked costs them.