Party Leadership

Every party has two leadership layers: national (chair, vice chair, treasurer) and state (chair, vice chair, treasurer per state). Leadership roles unlock party actions, whip authority over NPPs, and control over the party treasury.

Leadership Roles

National Party

State Party

Leadership Elections

State party leadership elections are run through the state party election system (statePartyElections collection). Elections are held for the positions of chair, vice chair, and treasurer separately.

Who Votes

All party members in that state who are in good standing can vote. NPPs in the state do not vote in state party elections.

When They Happen

Leadership elections are triggered by:

• A seat becoming vacant (the current holder leaves the party, switches parties, or their term ends)
• An existing leader manually triggering a new election
• Turn processing detecting a vacant leadership seat

Election Duration

State party elections run for a set number of turns (set in the election's durationTurns field). Players can declare candidacy and vote during the open window. Votes can be cast once per voter; the candidate with the most votes at endTime wins.

Score Formula for State Elections

There is no automatic scoring formula for state leadership elections — it is a direct member vote. Each eligible voter casts one vote for one candidate. Majority wins; ties are broken by earlier entry.

What Leaders Can Do

Whip Authority

State chair and vice chair can issue whip directives to NPPs in their state. Directives tell NPPs how to vote on specific bills or leadership elections. NPP compliance depends on their personality:

Whipping is free — no action cost. But each NPP can only be whipped twice per target per chamber, so choose your directives carefully.

Budget Control

Leadership sets how the state party's income is allocated across three spending buckets (set as percentage of incoming revenue):

• GOTV budget — increases voter turnout for your party's demographics
• Suppression budget — reduces turnout for targeted opposition demographics
• Org building budget — invests in party organization score growth

Only chair, vice chair, treasurer, or national chair can adjust these percentages.

NPP Influence

National chair and vice chair can spend party resources to influence NPPs in states where no player is active. State chairs and vice chairs can influence same-party NPPs in their state using party action pools and treasury.

Purge Member

The national chair can expel a regular member from the party. This removes them immediately, drops their party influence to zero, and moves them to independent status.

Cost to the chair:

• 25 infamy
• Half of the expelled member's party influence (deducted from the chair's own balance)

Restrictions:

• Only the national chair can purge (not vice chair, treasurer, or state leadership)
• Cannot purge other leadership roles (vice chair, treasurer)
• Cannot purge seated national committee members during their term
• One purge per party every 6 turns — cooldown applies to the party, not the chair

Effect on the expelled member:

• Removed from the party immediately
• Party influence set to zero
• Any candidacies in party primaries tied to the old party are withdrawn
• Any party-held offices they were elected through update to reflect independent status

The purge action is available in the Chair Office tab on the party page.

National Committee Proposals

The national committee can vote on formal proposals to change the party. All proposals run for 24 turns and pass or fail by simple majority (more than half the eligible voters must vote yes or no to resolve early; otherwise the proposal expires).

Who Can Propose and Vote

National leadership (chair, vice chair, treasurer) can vote even if they are not on the committee. The eligible voter count used for majority thresholds includes all of them.

Proposal Types

Rename

Proposes a new party name and abbreviation. If the proposal passes, the party name and abbreviation update immediately.

Position Shift

Proposes to move the party's economic or social position by ±1 step. The axis and direction (left/right) are locked in at proposal time. Positions are clamped to the −5…+5 range — you cannot shift beyond the boundary.

Election Method

Proposes how national leadership elections (chair, vice chair, treasurer) should be decided. Three options:

If passed, the new method applies the next time a leadership election opens.

Election Duration

Proposes a custom duration for future national leadership elections. The minimum is 168 turns (1 week) and the maximum is 420 turns (2.5 weeks). The party's default before any proposal passes is the system default (set in NATIONAL_ELECTION_DURATION_TURNS). If passed, the custom duration is stored as customElectionDurationTurns on the party and used when new elections are created.

Merge

The chair proposes to dissolve the party by merging it into a target party. The proposal triggers simultaneous votes in both committees — the proposing party's committee and the target party's committee. Both must pass (simple majority each) for the merge to proceed.

What happens on a successful merge:

Defunct parties cannot be joined. Their wiki and party pages remain accessible but display a "dissolved" banner. The mergedIntoPartyId field on the defunct party points to the surviving party.

Voting

Votes are cast in the Committee Proposals section of the party page committee tab. Eligible voters (committee members plus national leadership) may vote yes or no. You can change your vote while the proposal is still open. Vote counts are visible to all eligible voters in real time.

A proposal is resolved early as soon as one outcome is mathematically certain (e.g., yes votes exceed N/2 before all eligible voters have voted). Merge proposals wait for both committees before resolving.

The chairId vs chairCharacterId Distinction

This is a common point of confusion:

• PoliticalParty uses chairId — an ObjectId pointing to a Character document
• Coalition uses chairCharacterId — also an ObjectId pointing to a Character, but the field name is different

Always check the actual type definition when writing code that reads leadership fields. The field names are not interchangeable.

Related

• Party Membership — Who is eligible to vote in leadership elections.
• Party Organization — What org building budget does.
• Party Actions — What the action pool funds.
• NPP Behavior — Full whip compliance mechanics.
• Coalitions — Coalition chair mechanics and succession.