YMMV / The Campaign Trail

• Broken Base: Is 2000N a fun little satirical mod that helped introduce CYOA elements and the addition of a soundtrack into the modding community, helping innovate what a NCT mod can do? Or is it a confusing and oftentimes disturbing mess of a mod that strays way too far from what a NCT mod should be?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The 2025 Netherlands mod was made and released when that year was the expected date for the next general election...and then an election for 2023 was called. The election's actual result, a landslide in favor of the far-right PVV, isn't even possible on the normal difficulty and is just barely possible on cakewalk.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 306-232^ExplanationA recurring joke that all elections will end in 306 - 232, in reference to how both 2016 and 2020 resulted in the same votes towards both candidates.
  • Wallave^ExplanationAn intentional misspelling of Wallace's name, who's become a huge source of memes in the community. Originally and most commonly referring to George Wallace, the addition of multiple mods featuring Henry Wallace has lead to this nickname being used for him as well.
  • This is a good, liberal answer that will motivate your base. As always, make sure you find the right balance between getting your troops out and appealing to undecided voters. ^ExplanationA recurring piece of advisor feedback from 2000. The repetitive nature of this piece of feedback has made it a recurring joke in the community
  • This is Red Meat for your base ^ExplanationThe conservative equivalent to the above, it appears as advisor feedback in various scenarios, usually when the player decides to pander to voters through Anti-Immigration, Hawkish, Tough-on-Crime or Pro-Segregation rethoric. Mocked in a 1964 scenario, where choosing to promise to use nuclear weapons as Goldwater, makes the advisor say that it's dogfood for the average voter.
  • Flopulist^ExplanationAfter the landslide Republican victory in 1972, Spiro Agnew deemed George McGovern a "flopulist". In the 1972 Kennedy VP mod, upon finding out about the Chappaquiddick incident the advisor feedback suggests the player will also be a "flopulist". In the 76 Agnew mod, stating that Agnew may well end up a flopulist is an answer to the Maryland scandal question, which leads to the advisor feedback suggesting that McGovern is laughing back in South Dakota. The achievement for dying as Huey Long was also renamed to simply "flopulist", after the original name "fix your damn mod" was no longer relevant.
  • Your dead you son bastard!^ExplanationThis is a quote from the very... interestingly written mod Sumner '68, where antagonizing the south leads to them threatening your life.
  • A figure from West Virginia who's willing to be on your ticket.^ExplanationThis is the entire candidate description of Henry Davis in the original 1904 mod, serving as a microcosm of the mod's oft-criticized writing style.
  • [Insert candidate here] Who? ^ExplanationOriginating from one of Trump's responses to the third-party candidacy of Evan McMullin in 2016 ("Evan who? Have you seen this guy? I'm not too worried!"), it later appeared as "Sid Who?" in 1956 Red and was being used by Stassen as a way to discredit his opponent Sid McMath (who is basically a nobody in national politics). It's since become a recurring joke on both the Reddit and Discord to refer to largely unknown presidential and vice-presidential candidates in mods as [Name] Who?
  • Anyone paying attention sees this election for what it is: a disgraceful sham. ^ExplanationThe opening line of Gus Hall's candidate description for the mod 1972d has become iconic for mod mockups representing third-party campaigns (hypothetical or historical) in general, no matter who or when.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Politicians like Wallace and Thurmond backing segregation, regardless of their later disavowals, probably counts as this. Nixon backstabbing the American negotiating team in Paris during the Vietnam War certainly has to. The cake is taken by the anti-Lincoln confederation which, if winning, constitutionally enshrine slavery in the South forever.
  • In the 1968Romney mod, Lyndon B Johnson crosses the horizon if Romney selects Brooke as his running mate. Upon hearing of the weak Republican ticket, Johnson helicopters into the DNC, steals the nomination from Humphrey, and has the police open fire on protesters outside, causing a massacre that sends the left running from him and into Romney's arms.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The very unfortunate life of Jeon Tae-il, a South Korean worker who worked 14 hours a day with only two-day breaks every month, is touched upon in 1971 South Korea and ultimately ends with the young man setting himself on fire and running through the streets of downtown Seoul to protest the abysmal working conditions he and his colleagues had been put through. Unfortunately, the doctors are unable to save him and this incident gives South Korea a rude awakening to the dark side of Park Chung-Hee's industrialization and economic policies.
  • The special ending in 1864, achieved if Lincoln wins every electoral vote with Benjamin Butler as his running mate while giving Butler functionally limitless free rein is a horrifyingly realistic depiction of how a vulnerable America could be transformed into a dictatorship, with Butler's actions going from brutal but understandable actions as a result of the civil war, to flat out political purges of his rivals, as he ruins the democratic traditions of America for his own ends, leading to an eventual dissolution of the USA and its replacement with a unitary American Republic, where Butler runs a Frankenstein dictatorship as a nationalist, socialist imperial dictator, elections are nothing but formality, with true democracy only being restored after his death in the 1890s. The creator has implied that the shocks this causes in American society lead to a full on socialist revolution not long after the first free election of the new Republic. Perhaps at least as terrible is the fact that while boorish, corrupt, and brutal, Butler seems to be a true believer in his idea of a Jacobin Republic, fundamentally transforming not just the United States but global geopolitics in both good and bad ways. Butler begins ultimately begins Believing Their Own Lies by the end.
  • The ending where Nixon is defeated by Ted Kennedy in 1972: Peace With Honor is horrifying, to put it mildly. Richard Nixon is at a rather peculiar funeral in a church, and not a single person in the crowd has a familiar face. Until Nixon finds out that the one giving the eulogy is Ted Kennedy, who immediately alludes to JFK being alive and in the crowd. The crowd is then revealed to be the entire Kennedy family, who all screech and laugh at a Ted's joke about his family "having a thousand members". Nixon then realizes that, to his horror, the funeral he's attending is his own and can only scream in horror when the crowd starts chanting Kennedy over and over again. Thankfully, it's revealed to just be a dream Nixon had. Doesn't make it any less disturbing though.
  • The Bicentennial Bloodshed, one of the endings for 1972 Peace With Honor. This ending is achieved if Nixon admits to his corrupt tactics and beats Shirley Chisholm in the election. Thanks to Nixon's failure to establish peace with China, leading to peace with Vietnam falling apart even with Nixon's negotiations, unrest in the United States grows to the point where a Marxist guerilla organization, inspired by the Uruguayan Tupamaros, begins performing domestic terror attacks and hijacking television networks to inspire discontent in the American youth. The so called Underground Liberation Movement attempt to kidnap President Nixon, leading to SWAT tackling Nixon to safety and opening fire, all broadcast to an audience larger than the one that bore witness to the Moon Landing. The ending implies that the ULM hijack television sets so often it's seen as a weekly occurrence, all the while radicalizing more and more youth into their guerilla war against America itself.
  • Another example from 1972, if Nixon defeats George McGovern by taking all fifty states, the ending focuses on Nixon in the bathroom of his home after the results come in. Despite winning the greatest electoral triumph since George Washington, Nixon's neuroses remain clear. He screams "You're goddamn right!" while punching the mirror so hard it slices open his own hand. Nixon's unrelenting anger and paranoia that dominated his person in the last years of his presidency is made clear in this ending, and it's not easy to read about.
  • The audio of 1965 Midnight starts with Goldwater warning against a powerful executive due to its potential for misuse, grimly foreshadowing Rockwell's ambitions once he becomes president (which canonically happens by the way). The rest of the ambience is not much better, and only serves to unnerve the player even more.
  • 1956 Red's "The Record" ending details the final days of President McCarthy, chock full of Body Horror and Sanity Slippage. McCarthy checks into a hospital, complaining of constant nausea, vomiting and watery diarrhea. It's then revealed that most of the president's liver is missing and that his skin is a sickly color of yellow. As his condition starts to deteriorate (leading to McCarthy regularly soiling himself and peeing blood), he spends most of his time in the hospital utterly losing his mind before eventually passing away.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Surprisingly, in 1972: Peace With Honor, one of the endings is this for Richard Nixon. After a campaign against Shirley Chisholm, Nixon has a brutal second term, involving the usual scandals as well as multiple disasters in foreign policy, including Israeli use of Nuclear weapons. Nixon's morale falls worse and worse, until he is Driven to Suicide, traumatizing America forever. President Ted Kennedy even creates a publicly funded mental health program in his memory. The last words of the ending hit very hard, as Nixon's daughter gives a memorial speech on the 50th anniversary of his death, stating:
  “Daddy, wherever you are, I love you.” She continued. “I hope you know I’ll never stop loving you.”
  • 1956 Red's "The Record" ending (achieved by getting exactly 270-274 Electoral Votes) can have the player feel bad for avowed red-baiter Joseph McCarthy of all people. Suffering from alcohol withdrawal and cancer of the bones, McCarthy starts randomly making a speech to a hallucinated crowd about a so-called "new dawn" before muttering about how much he loves his adopted daughter.
  • From 1956 Red as well, the "An Unlikely Rise" ending that can be gotten by winning with Richard Nixon as your running mate is a lot less overtly grim than "The Record", but is still rather somber. Initially shocked at McCarthy's sudden demise, Nixon takes the oath of office a few minutes later in the Oval Office and despite all of the flashing cameras and solemn faces- still feels so lonesome. Finally reaching the top of the proverbial food chain, Nixon recognizes that the power he holds is fleeting (which the President's death so painfully represented) but resolves to swallow his pride and get to work anyway.
• That One Achievement:
  • The People's President has you win as McCain in 2008 after criticizing capitalism. Since picking that answer heavily hits your poll numbers and is hard to recover from, it takes a miracle to win after picking that answer.
  • WHY?!?!?!?! requires you to play 2016a 100 times. Needless to say, this takes a while.
  • This One's For The Record on the Showcase website requires you to get the exact canon result for 1956 Red as McCarthy, right down to the number of Electoral Votes each candidate has. Since McCormack and Conally's number of EVs are usually up to blind luck, this achievement is widely considered the hardest to get among the 1956 Red achievements.
  • Even more mundane achievements like "Dark Brandon Rising" in 2020 (win at least 406 electoral votes as Joe Biden with any running mate on at least normal difficulty) or its converse, "MAGA... Again" (win at least 322 electoral votes as Donald Trump with any running mate on at least normal difficulty) can be incredibly time-consuming and frustrating due to the random element of the game. Even if you know all the most optimal answers, know how to game the debate questions^note using inspect element, it's possible to tell the seemingly-identical answers apart and take the one with the best results and the best running mate to carry the most states, actually getting every state you need has a random element and getting the achievement can take hours of resets through dozens of playthroughs to actually get the achievements.

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