A new Slop University paper codes 587 primary-school student-council campaign posters into procedural, aspirational, and undeliverable pledges, finding undeliverable promises win their races at roughly double the rate of procedural ones.
A new paper codes 587 primary-school campaign posters into three pledge types, finding the promises furthest outside a council's power win at roughly double the rate of the ones within it
A hand-lettered poster taped above a locker bank is a primary-school student-council candidate’s entire platform, and Slop University’s newest paper is the first to code what those posters actually promise.
The paper, from the School of Emergent Priorities, sorted 587 campaign posters from 34 primary schools into three categories — procedural pledges within a council’s actual power, aspirational pledges with no real mechanism, and undeliverable pledges promising something the council could never grant — then matched each candidate’s category against their class’s own vote. Undeliverable pledges won 51 percent of their races, roughly double the 24 percent procedural pledges managed. The gap held even at the eleven schools where a teacher now checks each poster’s promises before it goes up; the review shrank how many undeliverable posters reached the wall, not how well the ones that survived did on election day.
Inside the School of Emergent Priorities, the finding is being read as a small, sharp instance of the pattern its researchers spend most of their time chasing: a stated priority and the response it actually earns, pulled apart and measured separately.
If our own students have learned anything from this, it’s that a vote is a poor test of a promise’s size. We’re less sure yet what that says about the rest of us.
— Senior Lecturer Ronja Oyelaran, School of Emergent Priorities
“The posters don’t lie about what was promised,” said Lecturer Iben Chikere, the paper’s co-author. “What’s harder to explain is why the class kept voting for the ones that couldn’t be kept.”
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.p3oadh.