Election Turnout: A Measure of Community Spirit?
One of the most common things we read on the conferences in the days after an election is “how come we had such a terrible turnout?”. This is often followed by comparisons to other countries before swiftly moving onto complaints that “our community must be rubbish”. However, these claims and complaints are often made without seeing the wider picture of Hattrick election turnouts. Lets take a closer look.
If a high turnout is generally regarded as in indicator of a healthy, vibrant community then the obvious question to ask is “which countries have the highest turnouts?” In turn they must surely be the most rocking communities…
Notice anything? Yep, these countries have some of the smallest user bases in all of Hattrick. You could argue that these smaller nations have a better community spirit than some of their larger counterparts, but that would probably be unfair on the HT behemoth nations.
It is important to see the major influence that the size of a population has on turnout. Some people don’t realise this, but a general rule of thumb is that smaller countries usually have higher turnouts than larger countries.
As you can see there is a definite ‘gear change’ between the smaller countries with large turnout percentages and the larger nations with smaller turnout percentages.
Here is an excerpt of the same chart but only showing nations with less than 1000 active users:
At least on this chart we can clearly see the data points!
You will notice there is a wide range of turnouts for the smallest countries, so although we saw from Table 1 the highest turnouts are invariably from some of the smallest countries, the opposite is not always true, i.e. just because a country has less than 50 active users does not mean it will have a high turnout.
Angola of course clearly stands out high above the others with the highest turnout in these elections at 77.3%. On the other hand Uganda and the Maldives as the newest countries to join the HT party sit on a rather more modest 14.3% (or 1 voter from 7 users!).
It is interesting to note the difference between Angola and Qatar: both have a population of 22 active users; however while Angola set records with 77.3% turnout Qatar could only coax 27.3% of it’s active users to the polling stations.
“Fair enough” you may say, “but Angola and Qatar only have 22 active users – that means Angola only had 11 more voters than Qatar”. Very true - this particular example is perhaps not as clear-cut as it first appears - but don’t think this is confined only to the smallest countries.
Lets take Makedonija and Malaysia as another example. While the 857 users that each has may sound minute compared to giants such as Italia or España who have upwards of 80,000 users, it is worth noting that only 51 of the 124 nations in Hattrick actually have higher populations. That means there are 71 smaller countries than these two - so really they aren’t that small after all!
138 Makedonian users voted in the elections, whereas only 61 of their Malaysian counterparts chose to voice their opinion. For decent sized countries such as these there is a whopping difference between 7.1% and 16.1% turnout!
I don’t know anything about the community in each of these countries but I think it would be fair to assume that Makedonija has a stronger community spirit than Malaysia, probably a more active conference and larger group of core users as well.
So, we have looked at the smallest countries as well as some of the medium sized ones. Now lets turn our attention to some of the largest:
We can see quite clearly that the largest countries follow the same general trends as the smaller nations – i.e. the larger the country the more likely it is to have a lower turnout. However, there is one startlingly obvious anomaly: Italia.
With 82,183 users Italia is the second largest country in HT, yet while the other nations with 40,000 or more users tend to have turnouts of around 2 - 5% Italia had an unbelievable turnout of 9,412 voters – that’s 11.5%!
I am unsure as to why Italia is unique amongst the large countries but, like Makedonija, I am willing to hazard a guess that they probably have a fairly active community and conference. I have heard that they have several successful community building projects ongoing, such as a match day radio show but as I don’t speak a word of Italian I am unable to say for sure that this explains their unusually high turnout.
Unfortunately Italia does seem to be the exception to the rule amongst the larger nations:
Wow! What on earth is going on in Sverige?! The motherland of Hattrick can only convince 2% of its population to vote? That’s the lowest turnout for any of the 124 Hattrick nations!
Maybe it’s apathy? After all, they have “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” in Hattrick by not only giving the world the game but by winning multiple World Cups and even the Masters. Perhaps the poor turnout in other older leagues such as England is also indicative of a growing indifference to the international game?
So we can certainly see that election turnouts are a mixed bag, but there is one thing we can say for certain: the grand old teams of Hattrick surely don’t like leading this unsavoury chart.
The question is: how will they turn things around?
Why not leave a comment?
Whether you are happy to be from Italy, Makedonija or Angola or whether you are concerned about your future in Sverige, España or England; please leave a comment with your thoughts on this article. Why do different communities have such varying election turnouts?
Have your say!
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Comment by Sinnots on 28 June 2008:
thanks for this info! I didn’t think it was only interesting to see the election results but only some (finally) gathered statistics about league size. Chile is catching up with Sweden, something I had no idea about.
as for the low turnouts? “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” seems to be a reasonable explanation if you ask me…
Comment by spinsis on 29 June 2008:
Wow, loads of numbers and good statistics to back things up, well done! Well, I’m not generally convinced that it is the got the t-shirt theory that will prevail when it comes to Sweden in this situation as many (read: all) other big nations have the same problem.
I’m more into the path of general thinking regarding the national teams from HT-*s, let me explain. It’s true in some sense that the election turnout/turnover can be used as ONE variable when it comes to community spirit, however it’s more likely a measure of conference spirit. All information and discussions regarding the election and the national teams are held where? Well, the conferences. Apart from a few lines on the front page 2-3 days before the election, and VERY limited space for the top 10 candidates in the election page (which is above all way to tricky to find) everything regarding the actual election is taking place on your national conference.
I’m not instantly convinced that the majority of the managers 1) hang around the conferences 2) is active in the conferences 3) would even pay attention -in the conferences- about the Top 10 threads. Therefore it’s very hard to see whether or not the turnout can be used as a measure of community spirit. I’d say as I previously mentioned that this might be one of the variables used, but it is more likely a measure of conference activity than spirit.
When it comes down to Sweden, another factor is that many old icons such as Gäddträsket, IFK Livergården, and Fumpen etc. which had made a name for themselves for various reasons have all left the game since long. These managers were all spokesmen of the National Team, having lead it on one or several occasions, even to victories in the World Cup. As ‘famous’ managers in Sweden reach the top division nowadays, they all seem to quit the more the game changes. This of course does not count for the icons who spent the majority of the game in Allsvenskan already, choosing to leave the game for other reasons.
To sum things up. I think it’s way to complex for newer managers to actually vote or even take notice in the election. Even if the notice the election, they will see a couple of lines from each top 10, which definitely isn’t enough (or should not be enough) to make up someones mind about the upcoming managers that should lead your NT. And if one actually try to take more interest in the election, you are met with various threads here and there, discussions about this and that, presentations here and there. Even though this is significantly improved with the new thread structure, I’d say that the efforts being made are not enough to drive up traffic and votes during elections. And as for Sweden, we just don’t seem to care enough due to (among other things) a high turnover of managers and many icons leaving.
General suggestions would include; remove everything that has to do with the election (except general discussions about the NT, competitions etc.) to a special global election sub-site/page within Hattrick. I’d say that this does not necessarily mean only the actual election, but would also count for the NT pages. These are just announcement pages! Radical changes are indeed needed to increase the visibility of the NT, and thereby the improvements of the elections should and probably will follow.
Comment by Sören Pulst on 29 June 2008:
Very interesting indeed. I just love anaylizing statistics.
For the swedish turnout I can only say that if you are not at the forum you wont have a clue about the election. Its a short information about the elecetion after the last final but then, not a word at My Hattrick before the election is over. I doubt very much that the swedish community will ever get a higher turnout unless Hattrick makes it more intersting.
Comment by Diego on 30 June 2008:
hi all
Comment by Prrt on 22 August 2008:
Chart 1 would perhaps become more clear if you plot the turnout percentage against the log of the number of active users.
Comment by DogNatural on 24 August 2008:
Hi Prrt,
I’m not sure what you mean? Table 1 lists the number of active users, the number of users who voted and the turnout percentage while all the Charts show both the number of active users and the turnout percentage.
Comment by Prrt on 9 September 2008:
Sorry for the late respons.
I meant chart 2.
Current situation: number of active users vs. turnout percentage.
What I propose: log(number of active users) vs. turnout percentage.
This will spread out the data so that the plot is more clear. This does not change the analysis at all, it’s just an easier visualisation.
Comment by DogNatural on 15 September 2008:
Ah, now I understand! Sorry!
Yes, that is a good suggestion. I wish I had thought of it myself…!
Unfortunately I am away from home at the moment and don’t have a copy of the data sheet to create a new chart. I won’t even be home until after the next round of elections have taken place, but I am planning another review then. I will work on a better way to display these charts, as you say they are not very clear.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Comment by moonburn on 26 January 2009:
if i´m allowed to speak for the newcomers
i don´t understand how the forums work and they don´t seem very active anyway
maybe a type of mass message to everymanager from a certain country to pick their favourite coach with possibly a link to the debate forum with the diferent candidates would make people visit the forums more often or at least vote in the one with the best design and smooth talks
Comment by katafiotis on 26 January 2009:
I was thinking that only we in Greece(and Cyprus) have this trouble because we might don’t work for the community as hard as we do for the National Teams. Very intresting reserch! In my opinion every NC should start from trying to make the community interested about National Teams, talks in forums etc. and learn about the Match Engine. It isn’t easy, needs time and maybe if the NT didn’t take good results, they will not recognise his job, but in my oponion is the only way to see something change!(or to enjoy the game and forgot the random! :P)