Are you wondering why your popular support is tanking even though all the factions love you? Have you just been playing Tropico 6 for the last couple of hours and can't figure out the secret to staying elected? Did you just take the easy way out and cancel elections altogether and now get annoyed about constant guerilla fire attacks?

This is the guide for you. It will go over the most important elements that contribute to your popular support level and how to skew them in your favour. Don't be one of those evil dictators that hate democracy, use democracy to justify you being a dictator!

There are a few elements that determine your popular support, all of which can be seen in the Almanac and by clicking individual citizens. We'll start by breaking down the elements that lead to approval for one citizen.


Probably the most important bit, but also the one that most people focus completely on and then don't realise why their support is in the drain.

In the Almanac under the Politics tab is your overall faction standing description. When you click on a faction button you'll see a breakdown of all the faction members. Factions are divided into 4 separate axes, each unlocked by a specific era:


It's important to know that your citizens can be members of multiple factions but they'll only belong to one faction on each axis. You will never see a Tropican who is both religious and militarist for example. Tropicans' overall faction approval bonus or malus is averaged between the (maximum 4) factions they are a member of.

This usually has the highest effect on your popular approval. The key to understanding this one is to notice the word "relative" in the description. Relative to what? The answer is: to the rest of the Caribbean.

In the Almanac under the Happiness tab is the Overall Happiness graph. When you click it you'll find a comparison of your overall happiness to the Caribbean happiness. The relative happiness modifier is then the difference between the two. Note: Each citizen has their own personal happiness number and applies the Caribbean happiness difference to himself individually, but it's easier to understand it by averaging it. Ultimately, if you don't keep up with your overall happiness, this will eventually become the defining factor of why you cannot get re-elected in later eras.

Example: you are in the modern era and Caribbean happiness is maxed out at 80. Being the money focused dictator that you are you put all of your cash into building your industry and neglected public services. Your overall happiness is 60. This means that every citizen of your banana republic is getting an average hit of -20 to their personal opinion of you. Some more, some less, but you get the idea. This unsurprisingly tanks your elections to the point where you are unelectable unless all the factions are absolutely in love with you, which is impossible without spending heavy with the Broker.

This is the bit where people hate you because you denied them their voice. From my experience this exists almost solely to punish you for denying people elections or committing election fraud, and won't ever be positive unless you use the Broker's image campaign.

Things that change this:

• Election fraud (negatively, around -10)
  
• Failure to hold elections (negatively, particularly big hit of around -20)
  
• Broker's image campaign for 7,500 Swiss dollars (positively, around +10)

This bonus or malus will eventually expire, but in the case of fraud or cancelling elections it tends to last through at least the next election period, so you will feel the effects of it.

It goes without saying that you want more people to support factions that love you, and less to support factions that hate you. This has a direct impact on your electoral success. There are a few tools ingame to help you achieve this.

If you don't use any propaganda, faction membership (i.e. which factions a Tropican supports) will be based on a normal distribution[en.wikipedia.org]: without your interference the numbers of people supporting either side will be roughly equal (with a chunk in the middle supporting neither faction), with most members being moderate, a smaller amount being strong and an even smaller amount being die-hard. These statuses have a number of important functions:

• They dictate the impact of faction support on that Tropican's Faction Influence approval stat - A die-hard will lose a bigger chunk of approval if you do things the faction he is die-hard to doesn't like, and vice versa.
  
• They determine the possibility of a voter being undecided in an election - Die-hards are less likely to be an undecided voter, and are likely to sway members of their family who are undecided to vote in a particular way when the election comes. This can cause a close election with many undecided voters to seemingly without explanation turn out very badly for you.
  
• They decide how easy/hard it is to get the Tropican to change their mind about their faction - Moderates and Strong supporters will flip factions, given enough propaganda time. Die-hards on the other hand cannot be swayed away from their faction of choice, they are there to stay and their numbers will only increase if you do use propaganda. More on how to deal with this problem below.

You can use propaganda to influence the number of supporters in each faction. This is done through setting media buildings to a specific mode after you completed their work mode research:

• Newspaper Faction Work Mode - Citizens living in the vicinity have a chance of 25% to shift their political orientation every time they rest. Does not affect die-hard orientations.
  (place Newspapers in range of your residential areas)
  
• Radio Station Faction Work Mode - Citizens working in the vicinity will have 25% chance to shift their political orientation every time they work. Does not affect die-hard orientations.
  (place Radio Stations in range of your work places, not residential areas)
  
• TV Station Faction Work Mode - Citizens living in electrified buildings in the vicinity of the TV Station have a chance of 25% to shift their political standing every time they rest. Does not affect die-hard orientations.
  (place TV Stations in range of your electrified residential areas)
  
• Movie Theatre Faction Work Mode - Every visiting citizen has a chance of 25% of shifting their political orientation. Does not affect die-hard orientations.
  (this is an entertainment building)

By the end game if you are using all 4 types of these buildings, you can set each of them to promote a different faction based on which faction on each political axis you intend to please.

Additionally, a few other buildings provide specific bonuses:

• Childhood Museum - Different work modes provide different bonuses, including faction standing bonuses/maluses, superpower standing bonuses/maluses, and economic boosts
  
• Mausoleum - Workmodes allow you to increase faction standing by number of visiting citizens (an honourable mention: the Cryogenic Vault upgrade allows you to store up to 100 dying Tropicans in exchange for their eternal support of your presidency and a little bit of usage on your power grid, though it goes without saying it will take a bit of time to fill it up... don't do anything I wouldn't!)
  
• Theatre - Improv Theatre work mode increases standing of Intellectual faction if visited by its supporters

If a faction has a significant die-hard voting bloc that you want to reduce, your options are reduced to personal actions:

• Institutionalise - forces a Tropican to go into an Asylum which removes their political orientations, leaving them susceptible to propaganda
  
• Kill - get rid of them permanently, at the cost of a potential increase in rebels on the island
  
• Arrange Accident - the more expensive Kill option if you really can't afford the rebels
  
• The Brandenburg Gate - this is a landmark (available from the Colonial era, so nice and early) that you can steal using espionage actions. It makes it impossible for Tropicans to be die-hard politically for any faction. While this means you can keep flipping your population back and forth, the double edged sword is that the factions you favour will not have any die-hard supporters (and the benefits that brings) either.
  
• Love it or Leave it constitution option - if a faction is really unhappy, you can perchance persuade its members to leave your island of their own volition

One of the more complicated aspects of Tropico 6, but once you learn how to use it it becomes like putty in your hands.

1. What buildings you build
This is either an exercise in common sense, or in steady research of what's the effect of what building on the political factions, but it boils down to this:

• Capitalists love money making buildings that make money out of nothing. To get their approval build Banks, Offices, Mansions, Tourism, Police Stations, Golf Courses and Yacht Clubs. They hate most public service buildings that don't make money.
  
• Communists love schools, public transport, Tenements, Groceries, El Presidente buildings (Mausoleum, Childhood Museum), Radio Stations. Despite what the description tells you they dislike Police Stations. They absolutely hate Mansions and Banks, and building a few in a row of these will make them start a general strike ultimatum really quickly.
  
• Religious obviously love it when you build churches. They also like Clinics, Hospitals and Houses. They hate army stuff, Rum Distilleries, Night Clubs, Cabarets, and other such degenerate activities.
  
• Militarists again obviously love it when you build army stuff. More Barracks, Army Bases, Guard Towers, etc. They also like Night Clubs, Rollercoasters and Weapons Factories. They hate it when you build Embassies, don't particularly like schools or environmentally friendly buildings.
  
• Environmentalists love their parks. You have a problem with them due to industry expansion? Build parks. Everywhere. They also love Wind Farms, Solar Power Plants, Garbage Dumps, Waste Treatment Facilities, Botanical Gardens and Hang Gliding. They hate all industry buildings that create pollution, especially oil.
  
• Industrialists are the opposite of Environmentalists. Build oil and they will love you. Build industry and they will love you. Build non-green power plants and they will love you. In general it's difficult to have this faction dislike you if you are trying to make money.
  
• Intellectuals love science. Most of the buildings unlocked in the modern era they will like when you build. Research Labs and schools too. They won't like Immigration Offices though, since freedom of movement should be absolute and all that. They hate army stuff, churches.
  
• Conservatives love army stuff, churches, Police Stations, and also TV Stations for some reason (I guess Fox News is the reason). They like outdated buildings from other eras such as Dungeons too. They dislike everything the Intellectuals like.

Note that pretty much all factions hate it when you build bunkhouses starting in the cold war era especially. Stop building them later on.

Note also that most things that one faction likes will be disliked by at least one other faction. Certain things (like army related buildings) can actually cause a lot of ruckus politically if you're building many of them at the same time, because they are liked by the Militarists, Conservatives, and (sometimes) Industrialists, but disliked by the Religious, Environmentalists and Intellectuals. This is important if for example you are about to be invaded by a foreign power and you only now realised that you need to build 5 barracks in a row. Try not to do that.

2. What edicts you declare
This one is a lot simpler because all the edicts descriptions actively warn you what impact the edict will have on politics. Things to remember:

• Detente policy is great for getting rid of rebels in the modern era, but conservatives absolutely hate it
  
• Mandatory Waste Sorting mostly manages the Environmentalists for you unless you go full ham on oil production. If it's not enough, get Happy Meat as the only bad thing about it is a malus to Industrialist faction relations, but that's one of the easiest factions to keep happy if you are using any industry at all.
  
• Communists love Agricultural Subsidies and it's a great edict in of itself if you build any plantations at all, I always enable it as fast as possible
  
• Free Wheels and Wealth Tax makes Communists love you and Capitalists hate you. If you're planning to use either of these at all, I'd suggest swaying citizens towards Karl Marx using the wonder that is Newspapers.
  
• The Audience edict can help avoid ultimatums and boost your standing in elections if you have a few factions that are 30-40 in terms of approval. It spawns faction missions for 3 factions with the lowest standing currently, they will usually ask to build a fairly cheap building (unless you're unlucky and militarists ask you to build nuclear program) so if you have cash then build and demolish and enjoy the +5 faction standing with each of them.
  
• Don't forget about Food for the People, Mandatory Siesta and Child Allowances. That last one I suggest you run all the time as fast as possible, since it helps people get enough wealth to move into better accomodation. The other two are useful when you need to buff up your food happiness or job happiness levels respectively.

3. What constitution options you use
Their effects on faction standing are very clearly described within the game, so this one is up to you to choose. However, it's my opinion that adjusting them based on faction expectation is a waste, it's better to use them according to the way you want to shape your island's economy. The factions that will be annoyed by that? Just reduce their membership using propaganda until they don't matter. Sure, they'll sometimes demand the constitution be changed. I only accept when it's an ultimatum or before my propaganda has managed to work its way through the faction's membership and I am facing a very close election.

With some experience you'll be able to know exactly what to do to keep important factions onside before an election, but here's some tips:

• Try to pick your long term plan in advance. Do you want to focus heavily on industry supported by plantations? The Communist party is going to be your best friend through the game. Do you want to transition towards Banks, Offices, Mansion rents and other means of passive money generation? The Capitalists will love that but the Communists not really. Pick a strategy and stick with it, otherwise you'll see major political upsets.
  
• Following up from the above: if you want to change your strategy, prepare the ground for it with your media. If the Communists love you and the Capitalists hate you, that doesn't matter if 80% of people on that political axis are Communists. And vice versa. Use newspapers and especially radio stations to change the membership numbers of each party before you start swinging your economy in another direction.
  
• Use edicts for their political effects as much as for their bonuses. Sometimes doing a quick edict before an election can swing it in your favour.
  
• If your Swiss bank account is fat, use the Broker to buy support with political factions. Don't do it unless the election is around 3 months away, it's wasted money otherwise because this support decays fairly quickly though it also needs a little bit of time to reach its peak (aka it's not instant).
  
• If all else fails, quick build a few buildings that a faction likes just before the election. You can demolish them straight after if you want, but this kind of thing is just a quick, dirty and temporary fix for an otherwise persistent problem and you'll need to spend some time tweaking your city before the next election is due. Just remember that building stuff that one faction likes almost certainly will annoy another faction.
  
• You can also bribe faction leaders for their support. It helps to squeeze out a percentage point or three.

This is the part that tends to cause the most confusion. See the picture below: the difference between these two graphs has a direct impact on your personal approval.

This swings in both the positive and negative direction, so its entirely possible to have all factions hate your guts while you maintain a 70% approval rating simply because caribbean happiness is 40 and your overall happiness is 60. This is rare and not easy to pull off and you have to actively work towards that to achieve it, but it illustrates a point.

Caribbean happiness is like a clock of doom ticking down. If you're not fast enough with improving living standards, you will be unsurprisingly hated no matter what the factions think you're doing right, and much like in Eastern Europe, your citizens too will yearn to experience the green of the grass on the other side.

You manage this in a simple way: keep increasing your happiness. The ways to do that on the overall are too much to cover, as most of it is down to designing your island in an efficient manner where your citizens are in range of everything they might need at any given time, but here's some quick tips to help you along:

• If your housing happiness is tanking, make sure you have no homeless people in shacks, using bunkhouses/Conventillos set to broke mode if necessary. If that's not enough, remember you can electrify your buildings and it's worth doing so even if the power cost is very large. In the Modern Era electrification is something that you should just apply to all your residential buildings. The power cost can be offset by the Light Bulb Ban edict (reduces power costs of residential areas substantially) and the Waste Management Plant trash burning work mode which makes it generate quite a bit of power if you've covered your polluted areas with them well.
  
• If your job happiness is tanking, start upgrading buildings and setting budgets to highest. Non automated mines are a gigantic culprit here, as are non hydroponic plantations eventually. Eventually you might even want to think about destroying low job quality buildings and replacing those jobs with something else. Importantly, keep an eye on your numbers of unemployed people. If it gets over a 100 and your population is around a 1000 or more, it's worth considering setting your immigration policy to Tropico First, because your own people will make enough babies to keep you occupied trying to make jobs for them and unemployed people tend to tank job happiness the most.
  
• Use the coverage overlays. Selecting fun/faith/healthcare/food coverage will give you a nice colour map of where your buildings reach, but more importantly it will highlight buildings that are currently fully occupied with an icon. Much of the problem with keeping these happiness stats high is the fact that there's not enough provision in a high demand area. If your residential area has all your fun buildings highlighted with an icon that shows they are full, the solution is simple: build more fun buildings in the area. The supply/demand aspect of this cannot be stressed enough.
  
• If your liberty need is tanking, it usually means your media buildings simply can't keep up with the massive liberty malus that comes from a massive military build up. Make sure your army buildings are far enough away from residential areas, and don't go overboard on the police stations. Use the coverage overlays to decide this. If this is impossible to do, remember that your media buildings can overlap, so build a few newspapers or TV stations set to the liberty increasing work mode in the offending area. Note that it's worth keeping a close eye on this need, if it's low enough it will encourage more rebels to appear.
  
• If you simply can't keep up for whatever reason, build a Commando Garrison, set it to max budget, and set the Intimidate Neighbours raid into a loop. This raid reduces the Caribbean happiness level, and can make or break an election while you're still building up your economy.

The last section is also the briefest.

As mentioned before, this statistic is mainly for punishing you for failing to allow for elections. The idea is to never be in a situation where you need to deny elections because your support is too low, because this particular stat causes a downward spiral that you will not be able to exit without spending your swiss bank account, because the negative effects on this stat take a long time (usually around 2 terms) to actually properly decay.

One way to mitigate this is to use the Broker. If you built up your banks and your Swiss bank account, you can unlock all of his 8 slots and refresh until you find "Image Campaign". This is a S$7,500 spend that will add a +10 bonus to every citizen's personal experience. This is one way to offset that one time where you had to cancel elections or rig the vote. It can also help in a tight squeeze during an election where, say, the communists suddenly hate your guts because you stupidly just built 3 mansions right before the vote.

Another way is to use Tax Cuts. Use this a few months before the vote to get the full result from the happiness uptick, but your economy better be able to handle it. If it's not, you can always use a Wealth Tax right after you win the election to make some of the losses back.

The Colonial era is a special period of time in the game. It comes at the very beginning, and is meant to let you kickstart your economy a bit before the external threats of the World Wars begin in earnest. You will come out of this with a modest economy usually, and the game attempts to usher you out of it by imposing a strict time limit that you can only extend by appeasing The Crown.

Fortunately, that is not very hard to do. The Crown will offer you periodic missions that allow you to extend your mandate, and these missions are worth completing ASAP so that you can move onto the next one and keep banking up your available time. It is worth entering the World Wars era with a decent bank account (at least $50000 in my opinion) so that you can immediately get to work building all of the public services, industry and military buildings that will unlock - you will need them.

In order to enter the World Wars era you have to not run out of your mandate time (hence why banking it up is so useful, the other mission rewards pale in comparison anyway), and win your independence. In order to do the latter you will have to have 60% of Tropicans on your island supporting the Revolutionary faction instead of the Royalist faction. Both those factions are only relevant in the Colonial Era and will disappear once you proceed to World Wars.

Building your Revolutionaries is relatively simple: do their quests (they usually ask you to build a Library, a Newspaper, a Fort, a Bar or a Chapel, all of which you will likely want to build anyway, and offer you 10 Revolutionary immigrants as a reward which you should always take), build Newspapers and set them to the relevant work mode (you will need to research it using the Library), and keep happiness high by providing the available services that you can. Once you have a decent income, pull the trigger and either defeat The Crown in battle (you will need around 2 forts and maybe some towers) or pay them the $15000 to forget about you. Easy peasy.

Following the tips and strategies outlined above hopefully you can reach results like this:



Hope this short guide helped you on the journey to manipulating your people into voting for you. If I left anything important out or you have additional info that I've not picked up on yet, leave me a comment and I'll try to include it in the guide.

Big thanks to these commenters:
Titan Methos for info on die-hard/strong/moderate faction approval and ways that it affects elections
Furin for reminding me of the Cryogenic Vault
Ikit Claw for suggesting a section on the Colonial Era

Thanks for reading.