Rehearsal Setup
The Elections Rehearsal Setup module is used for setting up rehearsal scenarios for use in simulation runs. To access this module, select the Rehearsal Setup tab in the navigation bar on top of the page,
Setup Scenario
A Rehearsal scenario is needed to set up a simulation run for an elections event. A scenario contains settings and options to configure the event’s contests options that will be used when the rehearsal steps are generated using the Generate Steps module.
Creating a new Rehearsal Scenario
To create a new scenario by pressing the ‘New’ button .
A panel will appear allowing you to enter the rehearsal scenario details.
Enter the Name for the scenario. It would be best to use a somewhat descriptive name including the target elections event and scenario type or perhaps a scenario count (e.g., ‘Super Tuesday 2020 - 1').
Enter some Notes (optional) to describe the purpose of the scenario if so desired.
Select an event in the Select Event drop-down which contains a list of election events available. Once selected, the Max Contest Wins value will change to reflect the total number of positions available in the event contests.
Set the number of Steps to simulate for the scenario.
Set the Default Step Duration. This duration is useful if you want to use the auto next step feature in a simulation run. This value can be changed from the Run Rehearsal module itself.
Set the number of desired wins for the Close Contest Wins and also the number of Landslide Contest Wins. The sum of ‘Close’ and ‘Landslide’ wins cannot exceed the Max Contest Wins value.
‘Close’ wins are where the vote percentage difference between the leading choice and the choice with the 2nd highest vote count will be less than or equal to 5%.
For ‘Landslide’ wins, the vote percentage difference of the top 2 choices will be greater than or equal to 50%.
Set the Default Max Polls value (per contest). By default, this value will be 100. This value will only be used when setting up for contests that don’t have assigned total polls values yet (i.e., still at 0).
Set the Default Max Votes value (per contest). By default, this value will be 10,000. This value will only be used when setting up for contests that haven’t have the eligible votes value assigned yet. (i.e., null or 0).
If the election event selected uses Parties, a set of controls will appear on the right side of the panel which will allow the setting of the number of contests to be won based on party preferences.
Select the desired option in the Summary Contest Options drop-down control.
Note that Summary Contests are like a normal contests but are marked with a flag in the database indicating that they are used to show the party lead counts. Currently, this database flag can only be set directly in the database contest entry itself and not from Chameleon. If you wish to use this feature, please contact Bannister Lake support.
There are 3 different options to choose from:
Ignore - Summary Contests will be ignored and not added to the list of contests used in the Scenario.
Regular - Summary Contests will be treated like regular contests in the Scenario.
Party Leads - Summary Contests will be used to track party lead counts.
This setting doesn't matter if there are no Summary Contests defined for the elections event.
Check the Use Party Scenarios option if the use of Party based contest wins is desired. This will enable the rest of the options following the checkbox control.
The Party Contest Wins grid shows the parties (shortname or code) with the number of maximum contest wins possible for the event. The maximum win value is based on the number of contests that have at least 1 choice of the particular party. The order of the parties in the grid is based on the pre-assigned Zero Vote Order value as defined in the Parties tab of the Elections Customize module. See the topic on Party in the https://bannisterlake.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ST/pages/11403307 document.
Set the desired number of wins for any of the parties by clicking on the Edit icon on the left side of the row.
A textbox control will appear on the Wins cell of the row.
Fill in the desired number of wins and click on the check icon to accept the change.
Use the Fill Party Contest Wins controls if auto-filling of wins is wanted. There are 4 types of auto-fill options available: Reset to 0, Set to 1, Equal and Party Order. Once an option is selected, click on the Set Party Wins button to auto-fill the wins.
The Reset to 0 option sets all the win values to 0.
The Set to 1 option sets all the win values to 1.
The Equal option sets all win values to the the max wins value divided by the number of contests.
The Party Order option sets the values using an arithmetic series whose sum is as close as possible to the max contests wins value (with being larger than it). The first party (#1) gets the highest value in the arithmetic series as its win count while subsequent parties get the next lower values of the series.
Note that if the assigned wins value for a row exceeds the Max Wins value for the row, the Max Wins value will be assigned instead.
Click on the Save button to save the rehearsal scenario options. This will also create the set of rehearsal contests which will appear in the Rehearsal Contests grid.
Note that the actual number of party based wins may not be achievable since higher ordered party wins are selected first and the contests left may not have any choices that belong to the particular party. In this case, you will see a message indicating which party wins cannot be fulfilled.
The label for ‘contests’ may change if the area type has a different label as set up in Chameleon for the Elections Event Type in the Customize module. In this example, the area label for the event is ‘Riding’. See the topic on Event Types in the https://bannisterlake.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ST/pages/11403307 document.
The grid will now show the rehearsal contests and their assigned options. If Party Wins and Close/Landslide Wins values were set, the contests will be randomly chosen to favour a particular party and also a win type of either Close, Landslide or Regular.
In this particular elections event, the contests have their max polls value assigned instead of the rehearsal scenario’s Default Max Polls value (100). On the other hand, the number of eligible votes was not assigned or available at the time when this example was created. As such, the rehearsal scenario’s Default Max Votes value (10,000) is used.
This event also happens to use a Summary Contest which will appear at the start of the list of contests and have their contest name marked with a starting *. Although the Party Win Type indicates ‘Regular’ for this contest, it will be ignored since in this scenario, summary contests are used to track the party leads during a simulation run.
Configuring a Rehearsal Contest
You can further refine any rehearsal contest after the contests have been created (when a new scenario is created or when the scenario options have been edited and changed). This is done by clicking on the Edit icon on the left side of the contest’s row in the Rehearsal Contests grid.
The following settings can be changed:
Max Polls: set this value to be between 1 and 10,000.
Max Votes: set this value to be between 1 and 100,000,000.
Start Step: set this value to be 1 or greater (and less than the End Step value).
Setting a value greater than 1 can be used to simulate a later start time for this particular contest.
End Step: set this value to be 1 or greater (and greater than the Start Step value).
Setting a value less than the max number of contest steps can be used to simulate an earlier end time for this particular contest.
Set Default Start & End Steps: press this button to reset the Start Step to 1 and the End Step to the max number of steps in the contest.
Win Type: choose the win type from the drop-down list. The following type options are available:
Regular: the vote percentage difference between the top 2 choices will be about 10%. The leading choice will remain in the lead all throughout the simulation run.
Tight: the vote percentage difference between the top 2 choices will be <= 1%. The top 2 choices will change their positions a few times throughout the simulation run.
Close: the vote percentage difference between the top 2 choices will be <= 5%. The top 2 choices will change their positions a few times throughout the simulation run.
Landslide: the vote percentage difference between the top 2 choices will be >= 50%. The leading choice will remain in the lead all throughout the simulation run.
Use Top Parties: if selected, you can specify the 1st to 6th parties where a choice from the 1st party will have the highest vote count for each and every rehearsal step. The 2nd party will have a choice from that party to have the 2nd highest vote count and so forth.
Note that setting a Top Party is optional. Any Top Party option that is unset means that during the generation process, a random party not in the selected top parties will be used.
Also note that only the parties of the choices already assigned to the particular contest will show up in the drop-down lists.
These controls are only visible if the election event uses parties. Otherwise the controls will not be visible.
Use Top Choices: If parties are not used for the election event, only this portion of the controls will be visible. When the Top Parties controls are visible, you can choose to specify up to the top 6 choices instead of using the parties.
Setting a Top Choice is optional. Any Top Choice option that is unset means that during the generation process, a random choice not in any existing top choices will be used.
Note that only the choices that are pre-assigned to the particular contest will appear in the drop-down lists.
Summary Contests in a scenario that has the Summary Contest Type set to ‘Party Leads’ will only have the Name, Max Polls and Max Votes showing.
Managing Rehearsal Scenarios
You can edit existing rehearsal scenarios by selecting the scenario in the Select Scenario drop-down list and pressing the Edit button . When the changes are saved, a new set of rehearsal contests will be generated using the new options.
To delete a scenario (and its rehearsal contests), select the scenario in the Select Scenario drop-down list and then press the Remove button .