POTUS Election Sim

A political career, from a statehouse seat to the White House

POTUS Election Sim follows one politician through a whole career. You start in a state legislature, a city hall or a seat in Congress, in any year from 1960 to today, and work your way up through governor, the cabinet and the vice presidency to the presidency. Each office is a full game, with its own campaign and its own job to do once you win.

Campaigns are played as debates, town halls, canvassing, donor calls and rallies across real states and districts. The results come in on election night, which runs like a TV broadcast: counties report, the networks call states when the count supports it, and the House and Senate fill in seat by seat.

Winning is where the work starts. Bills go to a floor vote in which every member of Congress votes on their own record. Budgets have to add up. Courts strike things down. Foreign governments remember how you treated them. Every decision comes with written options to pick from, and you can always write your own answer instead. An AI running on your own computer reads what you wrote and works out what happens next.

Your record goes with you. The governor you crossed as a state legislator is still there when you run for president.

The career ladder

State legislature: a short district campaign, then floor votes, leadership elections and a re-election that depends on how your district rates you.
City hall: 36 real mid-sized American cities, each with its real number of council wards. Pass a budget where every line has voters behind it.
Congress: House or Senate. Vote on 71 bills, run for leadership, and chair a committee: hold hearings, mark up bills, open investigations, and advance or bury the President's nominees.
Governor: sign or veto bills, survive override votes, balance the state budget, rule on clemency petitions, handle disasters and raise a State Defense Force.
Cabinet: the one job nobody elects you to. A President can appoint you from Congress.
Vice President: preside over the Senate, break tied votes, take on a portfolio, and be ready if the President cannot finish the term.
President: the top of the ladder, below.

A career that starts in the past is set in that year: its map, its campaign issues, its political class, and the real Senate, House and governor candidates who ran in each state. Pick one of 21 backgrounds, from military veteran and prosecutor to union organizer, tech founder and farm owner. Each one brings its own donors, voter blocs, natural committees and the attack line your opponents will use. Every office has its constitutional minimum age. After the presidency you can go back down the ladder, or run for president again if the Twenty-Second Amendment allows it.

Campaigns

Classic mode plays the campaign as minigames: debates, town halls with local questions, canvassing, donor calls, rapid response, rally hecklers and more. Freeform mode replaces them with a text box: write any answer you like, and the AI scores it.

Primaries with a delegate race, their own election night and a convention
A running mate who matters, or two, if you want to try a fusion ticket
Super PACs that spend for you and against you, and that you are not allowed to coordinate with
Questions that fit the year, so a 1960 town hall asks about 1960
Run as a Democrat, a Republican, a party you found yourself, or as Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996

Election night

Election night is a live broadcast. Returns arrive county by county across all 3,142 counties, states are called when the count supports it, and you can switch between the presidential map, the Senate, the House and the county view at any time. On the 3D map, each state rises as it is called, as tall as its electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by district in the years they really did. Third parties get their own column and their own colour on the map. Primary nights, midterm nights and down-ballot races get the same broadcast.

The presidency

The First 100 Days come first: cabinet confirmations, your agenda, a first bill and a first crisis. Then the term runs day by day through the midterms and into re-election.

Congress: 71 bills, each with its own coalition. Every member votes on their own lean, and you whip the votes you are short of. A bill tracker follows each one from introduction to signature.
The budget: a fiscal model under the whole term. Deficits pile up, interest crowds out everything else, and a balanced budget amendment forces real cuts.
Executive orders: six policy areas and three scopes. The bigger the order, the more likely a judge strikes it down.
The courts: nine justices who age, retire and die. Your laws and orders are challenged in court and can be appealed to the Supreme Court. Replacements need the Senate.
Treaties: negotiate trade, defence, climate and arms deals with the major powers, then find 67 votes in the Senate.
Amendments: two-thirds of Congress and 38 states. You can also amend Article V itself and change those numbers.
Constitutional hardball: resize the House or the Supreme Court, end the filibuster, repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment, admit new states. All legal, and all expensive.
Approval: every point you gain or lose comes with its cause, so you can see why the number moved.
Losing the job: scandals can lead to impeachment and a Senate trial with every vote counted. You can also resign.

The world, and war

A world map runs under the presidency: relations with every country, sanctions, foreign aid, covert operations, NATO enlargement, trade blocs, and a UN Security Council where any permanent member can veto a resolution.

Going to war takes votes in both houses of Congress. Then you commit real US formations, and the war is fought on a board of brigades laid over the country's real terrain, built from NOAA elevation and ESA land-cover data. You give orders, a day of the presidency passes, and you watch a replay of what happened. A war can end in a peace deal, an occupation, or a quagmire that eats your approval and your budget.

Nuclear command follows the same rules. DEFCON moves with what you have done in the world, a launch order passes through people who can refuse an unlawful one, and a reckless presidency can draw a first strike on the United States after months of warnings.

A Washington full of real people

372 real officeholders fill the game: senators, governors, House members, state legislators and mayors. They remember how you treated them in every office you hold, and you can ask them for endorsements and favours. A career set in the past uses the political class of its own era. After 2026 the world keeps going without you: real people retire, run and win the races you are not in, differently in every career. A social feed, written by the local AI, reacts to what you post.

Third parties

Found your own party with its own name, colour, ideology and platform. It grows with your career: members first, then state legislators, mayors, House and Senate seats and governors, and those seats vote with you. Run the party organisation, with its leadership elections, factions, treasury and platform, whether or not you hold an office yourself. You can also run as John Freedom, the political creator behind the Freedom 2040 movement.

History

Historical Elections replays every presidential race from 1960 to 2024 against the real nominees, on the real state results and that year's electoral votes. The world of that year comes with it: the Soviet Union, the NATO of the time, the arsenals of the time. Parliamentary America takes any of those elections and re-runs it as if the United States elected a Prime Minister, under four different voting systems.

Quick games

Quick Play: Presidency: skip the campaign, set your Congress and your Supreme Court, and govern from day one.
Quick Election Simulator: any two candidates in any national climate, simulated county by county. Put two presidents at their peak against each other.
Quick Midterm Simulator: set the President's approval and each party's strength, then watch all 435 House seats, the Senate class and the governorships come in.
Challenge Scenarios: 12 presidential scenarios and 8 career challenges judged on your whole record.
Political Playground: six short games built on the simulation: Policy Lab, the Situation Room, the Spin Room, the Cabinet Draft, Which Voter Are You? and the Hall of Fame.

The AI runs on your computer

The game ships with a small language model that runs on your own PC. It writes the briefings, the news, the social posts and the article about your career at the end, and it reads any answer you choose to type. There is no cloud service, no account and no API key, and nothing you write leaves your computer. The model runs in its own process, so if it fails the game carries on. On a weaker machine you can turn it down or off, and every screen has written content to fall back on.

Mods and the Steam Workshop

Make your own elections (any year, real or invented, with its own map, electoral votes and candidates), worlds, parties, campaign event cards and presidency events, and share them on the Workshop. Almost every mod is plain data. A mod that includes code is labelled, and nothing in it runs until you have read it and allowed it.

Also included

Story mode hides the numbers; Analyst mode shows every calculation. Switch whenever you like.
Six save slots, Steam Achievements and a Steam play-time leaderboard
Custom candidate photos, custom music and your own accent colour
A three-minute feature tour and a full in-game guide
One price. No subscription and no microtransactions.

Most of the changes since launch came from players' suggestions on the game's Discord and the Steam forums. You can join from the main menu.