The turn

The turn is the unit of play in the presidency game. It represents one calendar month, or one week with Weekly Pacing switched on. In a turn, the President answers the month's event with a policy. The country reacts to it, the institutions rule on it if Checks and Balances is switched on, and the consequences land before the player is walked through a sequence of screens and returns to the dashboard to close the month.

Normally the game decides for itself whether a policy counts as legislation, an executive order, a diplomatic move, a military order, a statement or a personnel decision. The player can also choose the mechanism directly instead of leaving that choice to the game.

Reactions

Every persona in the era's focus group reacts to the policy in character and scores it from 1 to 100, judging its direction rather than its size and taking it at face value. A persona sees a shortened version of the month's event; some events lose their headline entirely. Alongside the focus group, a federal analysis is written up, giving the executive summary, a recommendation, the policy's likely direction, and three press headlines from the left-wing, centre and right-wing papers. There is also a chance a consequence event is queued to land one to three months later, continuing the story of this month's policy.

With the Fourth Estate switched on, each persona instead reacts to a sample of their own news diet rather than to the policy directly; that mode is not yet offered on the setup screen while it is still being finished.

Checks

With Checks and Balances switched on, the policy then goes in front of Congress, the courts and the executive branch, in an order that depends on its mechanism; a statement or a personnel decision skips this step entirely. Any institution that blocks or narrows the policy changes what actually gets enacted, and if Congress amends a piece of legislation rather than passing or blocking it outright, it becomes a bill that waits on the dashboard for the President's signature. The game also recognises a personnel order — firing, replacing, expanding the court, purging — and, in war mode, a troop movement, whether it is written as free text or chosen from a menu.

Consequences

Every consequence is worked out from the policy as it was actually enacted, not the one the President originally wrote. A statement or a personnel decision does not move the economy or the social statistics. Diplomatic effects are calculated for every kind of policy. The 1960s also calculates a civil-rights effect, and the 1950s calculates the Red Scare meters if Red Scare is switched on; the Red Scare reading is the one consequence that also runs on a statement, because what the President says about communism is what McCarthy reacts to. Economic and social effects are then reduced according to how well the cabinet can put the policy into practice; diplomatic and civil-rights effects are not. Each stakeholder's reaction is a summary of how the relevant voters reacted, and each state's reaction works the same way, with a small amount of randomness built in. In the 1960s, while the civil-rights slider is set low, ten segregationist states give reduced weight to three Black voter groups.

What the player sees

1. The analysis. The federal briefing: the executive summary, the recommendation, the key risk, and the three press headlines. With the checks switched on, this screen also shows a card each for Congress, the courts and the executive branch, marked Passed, Modified, Blocked, Defied or Not Applicable, along with how much of the policy actually went into effect. A statement shows the word Statement in place of that figure. 2. The focus group. Every persona's reaction and score for the month. 3. The stakeholder map. Every stakeholder, sorted by score, with the top three shown as cards against last month's figure. 4. The dashboard. Pressing Return to Dashboard closes the month.

A month with no stakeholder reading, such as a private citizen's month in Career Mode, goes straight from the focus group to the close.

Closing the month

Return to Dashboard works once a month; pressing it again does nothing. Closing the month blends the persona scores into approval (see Approval and polling), applies stakeholder passive effects and, for premium accounts, favour thresholds, derives government and party stability from the stakeholder scores, resolves any bill left waiting, clears the month's chat threads, and advances the calendar.

The next month then opens on whichever comes first: an election, a war aftermath card, a State of the Union in January, a campaign event, or the month's ordinary event. Before that event, the game checks the Supreme Court for a vacancy and ages the bench (see The courts).

Campaign turns

During a campaign season, the same policy screen scores the player's campaign response instead of a governing policy. The economy, social statistics and checks are all switched off for that response. Only the focus group's reaction is taken back, and it is dampened before being stored for election night. See Congress and elections.

Free accounts

A free account always plays with Whacko Mode, Social Engineering, Event Generation, war mode, Dirty Tricks, Expanded Congress and the Fourth Estate switched off, whatever its own settings say, and cannot play past its month limit.