Let’s take a look at the results.
Thank you!
First off — thank you to everyone who participated! The polls this time received up to 26 responses, which marks a new record in this series of polls (with similar formats and questions) since HumanSanity kicked things off in July 2023. Until this time around, we actually hadn’t hit 25 responses to the first poll question since that original round of polling. If you voted in the polls this time around, thank you for sharing your opinion — I hope the results are interesting for you as well!
Okay, enough yapping, how’s the Cabinet doing?
As I suppose is some sort of tradition by now, I dug through the Discourse API to find the distribution of responses to each poll. For those of you that like charts (or want to draw your own conclusions before reading my thoughts), here you go:
Table Format (for screen readers, etc.)
| Position | Officeholder | Responses | Average | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Administration | N/A | 25 | 3.92 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 12 | 6 |
| Prime Minister | Penguin | 25 | 3.56 | 1 | 3 | 8 | 7 | 6 |
| Deputy Prime Minister | ProfessorHenn | 23 | 3.74 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 9 | 5 |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs | ProfessorHenn | 24 | 4.00 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 14 | 5 |
| Minister of Culture | Silva | 25 | 4.40 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 16 |
| Minister of Defense | Vrigny | 23 | 4.17 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 11 | 8 |
| OWL Director | lordnwahs | 26 | 4.81 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 21 |
The Prime Minister lags behind… but does she really?
At first glance, it seems Penguin’s approval rating of 3.56 isn’t the most spectacular. But honestly, I’m not sure how else to describe it. Sure, it’s the lowest result in the poll… but it’s still a net positive rating (if we take a rating of 3 as neutral). Sure, some predecessors have done better before… but if we look at the historical trends, I don’t think Penguin’s faring poorly per se:
I think the bigger concern for Penguin here lies, somewhat counterintuitively, with the administration’s approval rating. I say counterintuitive because 3.92 is not a bad rating by any stretch of the imagination — it’s the second-highest we’ve recorded in our polling (covering roughly the past year). And yet, 3.92 is also less than the approval rating of any individual minister other than ProfessorHenn’s rating as Deputy Prime Minister, but even there, Henn’s rating as MoFA is still higher.
Henn’s rating as Deputy Prime Minister, I think, goes to the same problem. Because sure, you can make the argument that individual ministers’ poll numbers show the “stand off approach” Penguin promised in her campaign has enabled her ministers to shine. But I can’t help but wonder — if the administration as a whole is polling is lower than each of its ministers with portfolio, and if the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are polling lower than the administration as a whole — does that perhaps indicate some desire for those ostensibly leading the Cabinet to do more? Is there something the public wants to see from the administration as a whole that’s more than just the sum of its parts? Because with every minister position with a portfolio polling at a 4 or more, I would think that if the Cabinet as a whole was being evaluated as just the sum of its parts, those parts seem to be pretty popular right now.
A resurgent OWL
As you may have noticed just looking at the numbers, OWL is especially popular. 81% of respondents rated lordnwahs’ performance so far at a 5, and everyone else rated it at 4.
An also-resurgent Ministry of Culture
It’s almost unfair to earn an approval rating of 4.40 at the same time someone else earns a 4.81 and steals the show. But Silva also comes in with strong approval of their performance. In fact, if it wasn’t for lordnwahs, that 4.40 rating would have been the new highest approval rating recorded in our polling.
I try to keep these write-ups at least generally grounded in the data, but honestly I looked at these two sections for something like half an hour and didn’t know what to write except “much approval. such high. many wow.” So if you’ll indulge me in a brief moment of punditry — I think a common denominator here is perhaps public visibility? From a quick scroll through the #announcements channel on Discord, lordnwahs and Silva are arguably the most visible ministers there. Obviously, in order to be visible, you need something to be visible about. I don’t mean to sweep lordnwahs’ significant efforts to breath new life into our WA voting and recommendations (which I feel like have been successful, though I don’t have the data to back that up) under the rug, nor do I mean to minimize Silva’s range of events from a culinary contest to Coalition Day festivities. But I do think that public presentation and visibility could be (part of) the difference between a strong approval rating and a record-setting one.
The cushiest job
Minister of Defense Vrigny comes in with an approval rating of 4.17. Again, I don’t mean to minimize their accomplishments — especially given they were promoted to Ensign just two months ago (okay, that was partially my fault for letting it take so long, but still), they’ve certainly hit the ground running when it comes to military leadership.
But, looking at the data, I can’t help but wonder if the Minister of Defense position is also just a bit cushier than others on the cabinet. Across the past six polls (including this one, but excluding March 2024 when there was no Minister of Defense), Ministers of Defense have averaged a rating of 4.16. That’s the highest out of any position in the Cabinet, and by a fairly sizable margin: the closest position with at least three data points out of the last six polls is OWL Director, at an average of 3.85, trailing by 0.31 points, while the margins between other positions are much closer.
Integration: if I squint I can see the pattern here
I put together a graph of priorities over time, but after sitting with it for a bit, I think it actually kind of dilutes the takeaway compared to just the raw poll results above. But, for completion’s sake:
I wanted to write up some analysis about these trends over time, but I think, honestly, the best reflection of where we’re at and where we’re going just lies with the most recent results. Looking at the historical trends, there’s been some bigger movement before, but I don’t know how much of it should be considered indicative of future trends. You can maybe argue the fall in interest in on-site activities was driven by general public satisfaction with Penguin’s performance as Minister of Culture demonstrating the value of a broader cultural role… but then you can also look at the fall in interest in World Assembly affairs this time coinciding with lordnwahs’ sky-high approval ratings and wonder if you’re just seeing things. At least I did.
But I think, for the most part, these trends are somewhat stable. With the special election at the start of this term, we went longer than we had in the past without approval polling, and there hasn’t been that much movement. That’s why I say the current results are probably just the best indicator, rather than trying to infer too much from past trends.
And from that perspective, perhaps we should be concerned that even the Prime Minister has said our integration “could be better” but hasn’t yet found a Minister of Integration. Because — stop me if this sounds familiar — integration comes out as the most frequently chosen priority, with 59% of respondents (23% of responses, though that statistic also varies over time depending on the number of options) feeling that it should be a priority.
A brief note: I dropped the ‘engagement’ option from the priorities because it felt to me like we use the term ‘integration’ more often in our political discourse nowadays. Last time I said something like the difference between the two is whatever people want it to be, but I felt there was a case to be made by now that the main difference between the two terms was that one was used more than the other.
If you really like data…
…I’ve collected the historical data from this series of polls, and organized the chart generation formulas, into a spreadsheet here. Feel free to take a look, or make a copy and share your own analysis of the data! There was also a decent bit of manual copying involved so let me know if you spot any errors in the data.
Feel free to jump in!
I try to say this every time (sometimes I forget), but I feel like I got especially carried away this time and wrote up something longer than I meant it to be, so I think it really ought to be said: feel free to chime in! You can write up your own thoughts long-form like me, or just post whatever thoughts cross your mind. I know I usually run the polls but looking at and thinking about the results can be a collective effort as fellow citizens 