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On Monday, all was calm. Practically speaking, Acacia Mason was running unopposed and heading for a historic victory when it comes to popular support. Congress was in the process of voting on the latest pardon to Rolo Tahmasee and therefore the news cycle should have been about that event and its impact on Canada.

The pardon did make the news although it quickly morphed into an afterthought (likely a good thing considering the absolute classless and entitled response thrown in our collective faces). Less than 24 hrs into his new term, President Acacia Mason announced he was stepping down and away. The cause? Immature threats made by a bored idiot who thinks that because something is available in the public domain that there are no boundaries and everything is fair game.

I support Acacia's right to separate life from game and that his participation in one will never give the right to strangers to stalk him in the other.

What angers me in all this is that we are talking about intelligent individuals making these choices, seemingly without awareness of the impact they can have on the entire community. I guess it just goes to show that intelligent people do not necessarily make smart choices.

But what about the survey results?

I'm fascinated by the numbers. I'm intrigued by the stories they tell over time.

Canada is a small nation, likely with an older more established population (I say likely because I have no data to compare to) and a core of very active citizens. It has a smaller core of very vocal public figures who establish the narrative but do not necessarily express the will of the community at large.



The active population of Canada is about 33%. These are the people that fill out daily orders, vote and participate in the economy (what's left of it). This is also the population that participates in these surveys. Does the "once a day" category adequately capture the silent 67% remaining? Likely not.

50% of Canadians end up in political parties. Of these just over 32% end up calling EPIC their home. When looking at the sample for the survey, we see that 39.7% listed EPIC as their party.



The rest of the top 5 distribution is also close enough to make analysis relevant. The "not a member of a party" sample compared to the numbers for Canada as whole gives us a further snapshot of the retention rates in Canada (about 10% for those that do not get involved in a group, this could be better confirmed by analyzing military units).

We often talk in Canada of always returning the same people to the same positions. This comes up most often for Congress. Although accurate in the sense that there is a core group of perpetually returning Congressmen (me included), there is a fairly large turnover rate. This was captured with the following numbers when asking if a respondent is, or had ever been, a member of Congress.



The surprise came from the proportion being so high, 69.8%. Although not universally true, I believe it would be fair to say that citizens that run for public office tend to be aware of what is going. The 30.2% remaining need to account for younger citizens, those that are new and those that are simply not interested in partaking in the mudslinging that inevitably occurs when dealing with politicians. Since these people are still very active, you have overall a picture of a population that is at least participatory if not necessarily engaged.

Pardon redux.

The first pardon passed with a slim margin and was vetoed. At the time, public opinion was running at 54.5% opposed.



If this was a referendum, Canada would once again have rejected the pardon, this time by a proportion of 52.4%. What I would like to note is that the 30.2% number does not measure a drop of support for Rolo. What it is more probable is that it shows core support and the percentage of Canadians (by the "no opinion" category) that really don't care for the subject but if not given a choice, would give pardon a chance.

Why do I come to this conclusion? Because you confirmed it.



By a very large proportion, the situation has not evolved for you. The fact that the main protagonist in this debate has taken zero ownership of the situation and that the leadership came from a member of Congress who is not necessarily a supporter means that the prospect for progress was always grim. As such, any resolution, even one that is unpopular, becomes progress.

International.

International and alliance politics provided an opportunity to ask some questions with a more global appeal. Canada has had a rather unique relationship with Bulgaria, it has an important group of ex-national from that country that are vocal and active here. Some of the debate on the conflict between Bulgaria and Turkey has happened in our media.



All these elements contribute to explain the high level of support for Bulgaria in this conflict. There are historical links that means that for many we could not turn our backs on them if asked to choose (which this question did not ask incidentally). Just as many would take our cue from EDEN or stay neutral.



And therein lays the challenge. How do you help a friend and ally in Bulgaria while at the same time help the alliance that is only strengthened military by the inclusion of Turkey? First, you don't leave, a position supported by only 6.3% of Canadians. Second, you take a more active role as 33.3% of you are suggesting. That means taping into our pool of knowledgeable military experts with international experience and sending them to our allies. Something unfortunately that Canada is not known for doing.

Empire building.

Canada, Ireland and France have been extremely successful in their management of their UK colonies. With that in mind, is it time for our nation to seek more expansion?



66.6% of you think so. The most popular opinion is that a war with Sweden would be the next logical step, while a smaller proportion was even more daring and wanted to see Central Europe as our ultimate goal.

What the graphic does not show however, is that the main goal of further expansions, as expressed through the comments received, needs to be acquiring new resources. Sweden would not fulfill that desire and comes with potential dangers unique to that country (Rylde came up more than once). And even those in favour of more wars of conquest would not want to jeopardize our acquisitions in the colonies and concentrate there if threatened.

Bonus Charts!

As with the previous two survey analysis, I ended up doing a few cross-tabulations. First by party membership and second by whether or not a respondent had ever been a member of Congress. Most of the results follow the narrative illustrated above but a few highlight some noteworthy bylines.



Only two groups of citizens truly opposed the pardon of Rolo in a significant way and those are EPIC members and those that list no political affiliation. The others are split and the MDP was in support.

EPIC is a coalition of independents and those without a party are in fact Independents. Suddenly the one party people like to accuse of not having an identity or a set of values, acquires one. One that is very similar to citizens who wish to remain on the outside or who see no echoing values in the established groups.



I would have said that those that are and have been in Congress are those most familiar with Rolo's crimes and therefore most likely to oppose him. That is clearly not the case. So there is a rejection of both the political process and the morality expressed by Canada's most notorious citizen.

We live in interesting times... indeed.

The winners of the last two random draws for this survey are juicyxeno and Iron Toader. Congratulations.

Thank you.