The Only Complete Political Career — Statehouse to Situation Room

POTUS Election Sim is a deep political strategy simulation that follows one politician across an entire career. Start in a statehouse district, run city hall, take the governor's mansion, win a seat in Congress, then fight through the primary, survive the convention, and claim 270 electoral votes. And then actually govern: all 1,460 days of a term, the midterms that can wreck it, a full re-election campaign, and a second term if the country lets you.

One character. One résumé. Every office you win and every scar you earn follows you into the next race.

🪜 The Career Ladder

Create a politician and climb for real. Each rung is a complete game with its own campaign and its own governing engine — and your record carries forward.

• Statehouse — A sprint campaign for a single district. Everyone starts somewhere.

• City Hall — 24 real US cities with real ward counts and neighbourhood-level district maps. Balance an actual municipal budget where every line item has a constituency.

• The Governor's Mansion — Veto queues, state budgets, clemency petitions, and a state that will absolutely re-elect the other party if you get it wrong.

• Congress — Run for the House or Senate, whip votes on bills, fight leadership races, negotiate on real legislation.

• The Vice Presidency — Lose the nomination and you may be offered the ticket anyway. Serve, wait, and know exactly what you're waiting for.

• The White House — The top of the ladder, and the hardest job in the game.

Your career résumé remembers everything: offices held, races lost, promises broken, scandals survived.

🗳 The Campaign

Lead your campaign from the ground up. Build grassroots support, hold rallies in key battlegrounds, manage your war chest, survive debates and scandals, and craft a message that moves real voter blocs across all 50 states.

• Full primary season, convention drama, and a running-mate decision that matters

• Run as a Democrat, a Republican — or launch a third-party bid with your own custom party name, colors, and logo

• Election Night as a real-time set piece: states report in live, networks make calls, and you sweat every tossup

🏛 The Presidency — All Eight Years

Win, and the real game begins. Your First 100 Days set the tone: cabinet confirmation battles (the safe pick or the brilliant, radioactive one?), your legislative agenda, a flagship bill, the State of the Union, and your first major crisis. Then the full term unfolds — year-one grind, brutal midterms, and a re-election year that launches the entire campaign engine again.

This is not a quiz. Your advisors brief you on real situations and you respond in your own words — the AI reads what you actually wrote, judges how decisive and politically realistic it was, and generates the consequences. Decisions resurface. That corner you cut in March becomes October's scandal.

And the job can be taken from you. Let scandal build unchecked and the House opens an inquiry, votes articles, and the Senate holds a trial with all 100 votes simulated individually. Two-thirds concurring and you are handed your coat.

⚖️ The Full Powers of the Office

• Treaties — Negotiate trade pacts, defense treaties, climate accords, arms control, and peace deals with 14 world powers. Then face the real fight: a 67-vote Senate ratification battle. Whip votes with public pressure, backroom deals, or concessions — or lose and gamble on an executive agreement the Senate will hate you for.

• Executive Orders — Six policy areas, three scopes. A sweeping order moves policy overnight, enrages the opposition, and has a date with a federal judge. Struck down, and the policy — and your credibility — go with it.

• Constitutional Amendments — The Article V moonshot: 290 votes in the House, 67 in the Senate, then 38 state legislatures ratifying wave by wave. Only 27 amendments have ever made it. Etch the 28th with your name on it — or stall at 35 states and die like the ERA.

• The Supreme Court — Nine named justices with ideology, age, and a memory of who appointed them. Appeal struck-down orders to the bench, watch justices retire at the worst moments, and fight nomination wars in the Senate: firebrand, moderate, or stealth pick — and stealth picks sometimes betray you.

• Political Capital — The currency of Washington. Earn it by winning ratifications, confirmations, and court fights; spend it whipping votes, appealing to the Court, and seating justices. Run dry and watch your agenda stall.

🌍 The World Stage

A full grand-strategy world map runs beneath your presidency:

• Live diplomacy conversations with AI-driven foreign leaders who remember how you've treated them

• Sanctions, foreign aid, covert operations, intelligence briefings, UN votes, alliances, and negotiated peace

• Declare war and command it on a real theater of operations map: a network of cities, forts, ports and airbases linked by supply roads, where positions must trace a line back to a headquarters or bleed out. Flanking beats grinding.

⚔️ Wars Are Fought Over Months, Not Minutes

The theater map has no clock of its own. You plot what you want done — march this garrison down that road, throw every adjacent position at that fortress, drop an airlift here, put a strike package on that dug-in position — then close the map and go govern. The days you spend on the presidency are the days your orders are carried out in. Come back and read what your generals actually achieved.

One presidency day is one day at the front, so a campaign is a genuine months-long commitment that grinds on in the background of everything else you're doing. Standing orders keep fighting while you're busy. Let a war run on autopilot and you get exactly what that earns you: a quagmire that eats your approval, your budget, and your term.

☢️Nuclear Command

The one power no other office in the game comes close to.

• DEFCON 5 through 1 — Derived from the world you actually made: who you're at war with, whose relations you've wrecked, whose soil your covert operators are on. You can raise the alert level by hand. Foreign capitals read that as preparation, not prudence.

• The Football — Pick a target, a targeting doctrine (counterforce, countervalue, decapitation, or a demonstration shot over empty ground), a warhead count and a yield. The Joint Chiefs project the dead before you commit — and tell you exactly how many of their warheads would survive to answer.

• The Two-Man Rule — Your authority is not legally checkable, but the order is relayed by people. A Secretary of Defense who judges it unlawful will refuse it, resign, and put it on every front page by morning.

• Retaliation — Anything with an arsenal shoots back, and how much survives depends on what you aimed at. Their nuclear-armed partners may join. Then you choose, round by round: escalate, strike their remaining launchers, or be the one who stops.

• And it can come the other way — Every day of a reckless presidency carries a small chance of a first strike on the United States. It is never a surprise: intelligence warnings escalate for months, and a threat board itemises every single thing you did to earn it. If it lands, your presidency is over, and the last decision you ever make is whether to answer.

🎯 Twelve Challenge Scenarios

One-click dares on the real presidency engine. Fixed president, fixed crisis, one loud objective:

THE GAUNTLET

• THE COMEBACK — 38% approval. One year to election night. Save this presidency.

• THE MANDATE — 486 electoral votes. Congress in your pocket. Now deliver greatness.

• THE TIGHTROPE — 270 EV, not one to spare. A 50-50 Senate. Don't fall.

• HOSTILE GROUND — The opposition owns Congress. Sign 4 laws anyway.

• FREEFALL — You inherited a crash. Catch the falling knife.

• EIGHT YEARS — Anyone can win once. Serve two full terms and leave beloved.

INSPIRED BY HISTORY — governing scenarios that rhyme with the real thing, complete with scripted mid-term shocks:

• THE HUNDRED DAYS (1933) — A Depression-scale collapse. Sign 3 laws in 100 days.

• NINE DAYS IN (2001) — You barely won. On day nine, everything changes. Hold the rally to the midterms.

• THE ASCENSION (1974) — Never elected, and you pardoned the person who was. Win anyway.

• THE OPENING (1972) — Only a hawk can make peace with the dragon. Ratify a treaty with an adversary.

• THE FRACTURE (1968) — The country is tearing itself apart. Win re-election without ever cracking.

• ACTS OF GOD (2005) — Four catastrophes are coming. Don't become the punchline.

🪜Eight Ladder Challenges

Career-spanning dares judged on your whole résumé, not a single term:

• THE LONG ROAD — Statehouse to the White House. Every rung, no skips.

• CITY TO CAPITOL — Run a city, then run the country.

• THE BACKBENCHER — No executive office. Ever. Legislate your way to the top.

• CLEAN HANDS — An entire career without a single scandal on the record.

• FAST TRACK — The White House in the fewest offices possible.

• ENEMY TERRITORY — Win every office in places that hate your party.

• THE COMEBACK — Lose a race, then win the presidency anyway.

• UNDEFEATED — Never lose an election. Not one.

🧰 The Political Playground

Six quick, replayable toys between full runs — every one built on the simulation's own engines. Five minutes each, endlessly re-runnable, and all of them shareable:

• Policy Lab — Type any policy you can imagine. It reads 25 policy domains, scores all 20 stakeholder groups instantly, and puts your words in front of a live AI focus group of the game's own voters — who then revise the verdict in their own voice.

• The Situation Room — It's 3 A.M. and they woke you up. Twelve crises, one clock each, two advisors who disagree. Type the order the way you'd actually say it out loud, then read what happened over the next 72 hours — including the part that went wrong.

• The Spin Room — Thirty seconds of airtime. Write the attack ad from a real opposition file, or the statement that saves you from a scandal. The fact-checkers rate it, the opponent's war room fires back, and a swing voter tells you what actually landed.

• The Cabinet Draft — Eight seats, three candidates each: the loyalist, the technocrat, the wildcard. Nobody is the right answer. Get your projected first year — who the Senate destroys, who detonates in the autumn, and who quietly does the work.

• Which Voter Are You? — Eight honest questions matched against the simulation's own voter personas. Meet your political twin, then watch them judge your presidency.

• Hall of Fame — Every presidency graded by legacy score, every campaign counted, every crisis drill and conquered challenge remembered. All local — your machine, your legend.

The Wikipedia Trophy — Your AI-written presidential biography, with one-click copy and export. Take the receipts with you.

🤖 AI That Runs on YOUR Machine

No cloud. No subscription. No API keys. The AI runs locally, on your hardware, and it's everywhere:

• Reads your free-text decisions and generates consequences, advisor reactions, and follow-up events

• 20 named voter personas — a retired teacher in suburban Ohio, a union electrician in Detroit — shift as you govern

• 20 stakeholder groups, from Wall Street to the unions to the gun lobby, with memories

• Generated headlines, social-media reactions, and a strategic AI campaign advisor

• At the end: an AI-written Wikipedia-style biography of your presidency and a historical assessment of your legacy

Game Modes

• Political Career — One politician, the whole ladder: statehouse, city hall, governor, Congress, the White House. Your record follows you.

• Campaign Trail — The full presidential election against AI opponents. Momentum, money, and 270 to win.

• Presidency Mode — Govern all eight years. Make the calls. Get destroyed in the midterms. Run it back.

• Challenge Scenarios — Twelve named dares: six gauntlet runs, six inspired by history.

• Ladder Challenges — Eight career-spanning dares judged on your whole résumé.

• Midterm Elections — Run for the House or Senate, govern from Capitol Hill, climb the ladder.

• Governor & Mayor — Full state and municipal campaigns with their own governing engines, budgets, and maps.

• Historical Elections — Replay every race from 1980 to 2024 and write your own history.

• Election Night — The drama of Election Day in real time as states report.

• Quick Play: Presidency — Skip the campaign, pick your Congress, govern from Day One.

• Quick Sim — Fully customizable instant elections. Finally, we can get Obama vs Trump.

• The Political Playground — Six sandbox toys: Policy Lab, the Situation Room, the Spin Room, the Cabinet Draft, the voter quiz, and the Hall of Fame.

• Interactive Tour — Learn the ropes with guided scenarios.

Key Features

• The complete political career: statehouse → city hall → governor → Congress → primary → convention → general → presidency → midterms → re-election → second term → legacy

• Deep 50-state electoral strategy with realistic state partisan leans and volatility

• 24 playable cities with real ward counts and real council-district boundaries

• Treaties with Senate ratification, executive orders with court challenges, and Article V constitutional amendments

• A nine-justice Supreme Court with retirements, nomination battles, and appeals — plus a political-capital economy and optional hardcore modes

• Impeachment: House inquiry, articles, and a Senate trial with all 100 votes simulated

• Cabinet appointments with real confirmation battles — 8 posts, safe picks vs. brilliant risks

• World-map grand strategy: months-long wars on a live theater map, sanctions, covert ops, UN votes, alliances, peace deals

• Full nuclear command: DEFCON, four targeting doctrines, the two-man rule, retaliation, and a first-strike risk you create yourself

• Dynamic event system with emergent scenarios and consequences that resurface when you least want them

• Resource management — budget, staff, momentum, approval, political capital

• Custom everything: candidate photos, custom parties, custom music, fully customizable simulations

• Steam Achievements, full save system, and an offline-capable local AI — one price, no subscription, ever