The goal of The Political Machine is to secure enough votes to secure the presidency of the United States within a set number of turns. To this end, players need to raise money, travel the nation and sway the minds of voters by any means necessary. Winning votes involves a mathematical formula where candidates need to make states aware of who they are and where they stand on key issues in relation to their opponents. Making speeches and paying for advertisements raise awareness and sway voters, but candidates will need some extra kick to their campaign. Candidates accumulate wealth along with resources called Political Capitol and PR Clout by building and upgrading Election Headquarters, Consultants Office and Outreach Centers. Only one type of structure can be built per state, so players need to balance between the three resources and figure out how best to use campaign funds. Political Capitol can be used to hire operatives to either help boost your image or undermine the opponent's campaign. Powerful special units can also be found through investigating random events, which are wildcards that can help or hurt a campaign. PR Clout goes toward winning endorsements from special interest groups, which go a long way toward winning votes. Although some groups seem like natural picks, players have to be careful because the causes they represent automatically become the candidate's. For example, a candidate cannot oppose gay marriage if endorsed by a special interest group that advocates it.


While the parts look like they fit together into a nice political strategy game, things soon start to unravel. A large part of the problem comes from the fact that the game highlights an arguable flaw with the Electoral College. Players only need to focus on pouring all their resources into winning over Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California and Illinois to win. There's a challenge in flipping states that predominantly support the opposition's political party, especially when the opponent has more charisma or wealth, but every encounter comes down battling over these five states. The rest of the country can be ignored except for occasionally throwing a fund raiser or putting up buildings for resources. One could devise a different strategy but it's hardly worth the effort. The prohibitive travel system forces players to spend $25,000 to jet across states, meaning that it costs the same to move from New Jersey to New York as it does to get from coast-to-coast. The high cost of travel makes it difficult to focus on more than a handful of states. With everything taken together, almost every game results in performing the exact same steps over and over again.

PR Clout soon becomes a pointless resource because there are only ten special interest groups. Although conservative groups like the NRA require a lot of clout, endorsements can be won in relatively short time. Once they're all gone, Outreach Centers don't serve a purpose anymore, so there's usually no sense in building too many or upgrading them. Although endorsements provide big bonuses, hiring a truckload of operatives and piling them all into the key states can counter them.

The Political Machine relies heavily on bringing up key issues and taking a stance on them. Many issues are easy to get behind. Unless a player is looking to purposefully make the game harder, supporting improving the economy and lowering gas prices is a given. Different states value different issues. While one might put high importance on saving the environment, another is interested in improving social security. Taking a position on controversial topics like withdrawing from Iraq and the War on Terror will boost popularity with one party while lowering it for another. Humorous issues like uncovering the alien conspiracy come mixed in, but they don't add much to the game and can be completely ignored. Except for winning the endorsement of a special interest group, there's little reason to go against the grain on any of the controversial topics, like being a pro-choice Republican for example. With enough operatives and advertisements, any state can be won without deviating from the straight and narrow party path.

Candidates can be interviewed on TV programs that parody real life shows like the Colvert Report (The Colbert Report) to improve their national presence, but the interview can also backfire and lower people's opinions. While that might sound interesting, it's really not. There's no incentive to take a unique stance on any topic. Players generally get by with generic answers likely to please the largest number of people or at least their own party. It's not like there's a post election game where the new president needs to follow-through on promises, nor does the media call-out candidates for being contradictory. It often feels like most decisions in The Political Machine are made automatically with nothing to help vary things up. Interview requests show up as random events and quickly disappear from the map. There's no way to request a television appearance or set up PR events. Players can't challenge opponents to face-off in a televised debate. Undermining the opposition's reputation involves picking a topic that he or she has no strong position on and making one up for them in an ad campaign. There are no repercussions to making up false claims.


The Political Machine is too simplistic, even for a game that features bobbleheads. It's also a game that seems to pretty much play itself since there's no incentive, apart from some minor bragging rights, to do anything different or unexpected. This makes for some mild entertainment playing through once or twice, but leaves no long-term replay value or reason to finish the campaign mode that pits players against six opponents in succession. One could treat The Political Machine as a tool to help teach a rudimentary understanding of U.S. politics, but the lesson can be quickly learned with one or two tries. Ultimately, there's no reason to keep this machine running.