Skyrim civil war political alignment study: Imperials v. Stormcloaks

Which side you take says a lot about your political alignment

Does the side you take reflect your political beliefs? Quite a bit, in fact. (Source)

Last week, I announced that I was doing a survey about the Skyrim Civil War and the correlation between the side one chose in the war and their political ideology. The results of that survey are in, and the data have been thoroughly analyzed, so let us see what the results say.

Understanding the Data

First of all, we must discuss how the study was done. A Google form was created that asked five questions. First, it asked which side someone takes in the Skyrim Civil War and split that five ways: strong Imperial, lean Imperial, neutral, lean Stormcloak, and strong Stormcloak. Second, it asked each respondent to give a brief explanation of why they made their choice (for some qualitative data). Then it asked what the person’s political alignment was, with the options of “Conservative (right-wing),” “Liberal (left-wing),” “Libertarian,” “Centrist,” and “None of the above.” The last two questions concerned the person’s country of residence and age.

The primary method of dispersing the survey was via Reddit, through r/samplesize. A few other subreddits were visited, and other sites and social media, as well as Medium itself, brought in more participants. This prevented the sample from being totally random, and it renders the study unable to determine the grander questions, such as whether or not more people support the Imperials or the Stormcloaks. Instead, this study should be seen more as conducting five simultaneous mini-studies of the five civil war positions and/or the five political groups.

In total, there were 374 participants in the study. As the graph above shows, more participants favored the Imperials at 46.8%, while the Stormcloaks sat at 37.4%. Remember, though, since this was not a perfectly random sample, this is not indicative of which side is actually the most popular among Skyrim players. The same goes for the next chart.

The liberals appear to be the dominant group here. Again, owing to the lack of random sampling, we cannot conclude from this that Skyrim players are primarily liberal. We can, however, draw conclusions from the patterns that emerge when the data we have on the sides players chose in the war is compared with the data on their political alignment, and the trends were stark and unambiguous.

Before we jump into that, we need to clarify some language. From this point forward, anyone who was Strong Imperial or Lean Imperial will be included in the term “Imperial.” Likewise, anyone who was Strong Stormcloak or Lean Stormcloak will be included in the term “Stormcloak.” Ones who show no preference will be considered “neutral” (neutral conservative). People who identified as “none of the above” politically who are neutral in the war will be considered true neutrals.

With that explained, let us look at how one’s side in the civil war matched up with their political views.

Matching Politics and Faction

Liberals and centrists were most likely to be Imperials, while conservatives and libertarians were most likely to be Stormcloaks. Using liberals as a baseline, centrists were 1.07 times more likely to be Stormcloaks, while conservatives were 1.73 times more likely. Libertarians were the standard-bearers of Ulfric, as they were 2.29 times more likely to be Stormcloaks than liberals. Conversely, liberals were 1.14 times more likely to be Imperials than centrists, 1.82 times more likely than conservatives, and 3.25 times more likely than libertarians.

While liberals were the primary Imperials and libertarians the primary Stormcloaks, centrists and conservatives still have their own accolades. Conservatives were most likely to take an extreme position (strong Imperial or strong Stormcloak) and were the only group with a majority of extremists at 55.4%. Centrists, as their name implies, were the most tempered (or least extreme), with only 17.5% of their group taking a “strong” position in the war. This did not make centrists the most neutral, however.

Those who identified as “none of the above” politically not only had the highest rate of neutrality, they were also the most balanced, being almost equally likely to be an Imperial, a Stormcloak, or a true neutral.

Overall, most groups took a side. With the obvious exception of “none of the above,” conservatives were the lowest, with only 82.1% taking a side, while liberals were the most partial, at 89.7%.

Understanding Motivations

Understanding why these political groups aligned at the rates that they did is possible by examining the motivations. Participants were allowed to give reasons why those chose their side. Some gave a single reason; others gave many, so some of these are not mutually exclusive. The most common ones were:

Stormcloak racism

Anti-imperialism

Almost being executed by the Empire at the beginning of the game

Stopping the Thalmor (in terms of the bigger picture)

Error on both sides

Religious freedom

“Skyrim belongs to the Nords”

Imperials seen as Thalmor puppets

Role-playing

Some of these terms are clear-cut, while others are attempts to summarize what were often nuanced opinions. “Anti-imperialism,” for example, attempts to coalesce what was a series of interconnected feelings among participants, which included opposition to the Empire’s colonialism, support of self-determination of nations (such as Skyrim), and the view that the Empire was an oppressive, autocratic state.

In that same vein, “stopping the Thalmor” meant that the Empire was the best entity either to defeat or to contain the Aldmeri Dominion, and both statements were usually accompanied by an observation that the Stormcloaks could not see the bigger picture. Whether the hope was to defeat the Thalmor in the future or to keep them deterred, both views are included under this umbrella term.

The Imperials

The leading motive for the Imperials was stopping the Thalmor, at 58.3%. The (supposed) racism of the Stormcloaks was reason #2, with 12% of Imperials acknowledging that both sides had flaws, effectively arguing that the Stormcloaks were simply worse. This overall picture is still not reliable, though, owing again to the sampling bias. When we break Imperial motives down by ideology, however, some more patterns emerge.

Most groups were more motivated by the desire to stop the Thalmor, but liberal Imperials were ever so slightly more motivated into siding with the Empire because of the racism of the Stormcloaks. Conservative Imperials were the least sensitive to racism and the most likely to be interested in keeping the Empire together to defeat the Thalmor.

The Stormcloaks

Here, we see that the main motivation of the Stormcloaks was anti-imperialism, followed by religious freedom. More differences can be found as the Stormcloaks are sorted politically:

Here, anti-imperialism was a big concern, but it was its most major with libertarians, almost as a single issue. Centrists were not concerned about it at all, and conservatives were equally concerned about religious freedom, while more still believed “Skyrim belongs to the Nords.” The extent to which this was said in jest or with sincerity is not possible to determine, but it is nonetheless the case that conservatives were overwhelmingly more likely to express this sentiment.

Conservatives also led in citing religious freedom as a motivation, but this was a fairly common motivation for all groups. Libertarians and centrists were most likely to accuse the Imperials of being puppets of the Thalmor or too easily influenced by them.

Neutrals

A majority of those who took neither side criticized both sides, which might not come as a surprise. As with the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, the sampling bias prevents the overall picture from being indicative of anything. We need to break it down.

The leading reason for the groups was, indeed, the general view that both sides were bad. Liberals were almost alone in citing their concern about the racism of the Stormcloaks and were also more likely to argue against the religious oppression of the Imperials.

True Neutrals

True neutrals were the most likely of any cross-section to criticize both sides on the war. A smaller majority of them were still sensitive to the racism of the Stormcloaks, about twice as much as they were worried about the imperialistic ways of the Empire.

Other Observations

Nationality

Participants were given a list of options to name their country of origin or put “None of the above,” if it was not listed. Except for the United States, no other country provided a large enough sample size to be considered statistically significant. As such, we shall only compare the differences between Americans and non-Americans.

Americans and non-Americans were about equally likely to be neutral. Americans were slightly more likely (about 5%) to be Stormcloaks than non-Americans.

Age

87.2% of the participants were adults aged 18–35. This is almost certainly a product of both the means by which the study was promoted and the fact that a video game such as Skyrim mainly appeals to younger audiences.

Conclusions

Several patterns and consistencies emerged by looking at cross-sections of the data and at the qualitative responses. Imperials could overwhelmingly count on support from liberals and also centrists to a point. Stormcloaks, meanwhile, were dominated by libertarians and, to a lesser extent, conservatives. For those who did not adopt a listed political label, their position was effectively impossible to predict. While the data make it clear that knowing a person’s political alignment does not guarantee which side he/she would take, they showed that there were high probabilities, enough on which to bet money.

A look at the qualitative data on motivations shows that liberal Imperials were mostly motivated by a strictly political impulse: opposition to the perceived racism of the Stormcloaks. While the other groups were mainly motivated by keeping the Empire united to defeat the Thalmor, this is also a fairly political rationale, comparable to the federalism of early American history.

Even liberal Stormcloaks were far more likely to speak ill of the perceived racism of Ulfric and his cause, something that the conservative Imperials hardly even mentioned. Conservative Stormcloaks, on the other hand, had far-and-away the least hesitation in making the race-based proclamation of “Skyrim belongs to the Nords.” One conservative Stormcloak even stated:

The Nords are clearly the best race. All the others suck, especially elves. Actually, I don’t mind Redguards or Bretons.

While other sentiments such as anti-imperialism and freedom of religion played a part, the issue of race was a decisive wedge between liberals and conservatives in the course of the war. Whether this means that conservatives are more racist or if liberals are hypersensitive to racial issues is not something that can be determined.

In summary, there was a very strong, very observable relationship between one’s political views and one’s side in the Skyrim Civil War. Non-political motives such as role-playing or anger over the attempted execution by the Empire at the start of the game took a back seat to questions of individual rights and national security. Certain motivations were more easily found according to political alignment as well.

It is therefore concluded that one’s side in the war is indicative of one’s political alignment, whatever judgments one might make about those alignments. Given that I am a centrist, the point here is not to paint liberals in a more favorable light than conservatives but to speak honestly about the differences that occurred in the data.

An additional conclusion about the Skyrim Civil War is that one can effectively use these fictional environments as a means of testing political scenarios that pertain to the real world. The underlying logic is that people carry the same values that they hold in the real world into the game world. Once we can control for variables such as role-playing and other in-game factors, we are able to predict human behavior in game quests such as the Civil War and understand how the chips would fall in reality.