1970 Kingdom of Monsters general election (The Kingdom Under the Mountain)

The 1970 Kingdom of Monsters general election was held on Monday Novemeber 2 1970. It resulted in a surprise victory for the The National Party under leader Rudy Carter which defeated the governing Liberal Party under Bailey Graham. The Labour Party, under its new leader Mark Grimond lost 3 seats. The National Party, including the Conservatives, secured a narrow majority of 8 seats.

Most opinion polls prior to the election indicated a narroe Liberal victory, and put Liberal up to 10,1% ahead of the The National Party. On election day, however, a late swing and a scandal about corruption in the Liberal Party gave the The National Party a 20.6% lead and ended six years of Liberal government, although Grimond remained leader of the Liberal Party in opposition. Writing in the aftermath of the election, the political scientist described the The National Party victory as "surprising" and noted a significant shift in votes between the two main parties. The Home Times journalist Abeerdeen Juliet wrote that the election would be "remembered as the occasion when the people of the Kingdom of Monsters hurled the findings of the opinion polls back into the faces of the pollsters".

Liberal Party Nominations
Challenger:
 * Oda Masaaki, governor of Tokoaga

The contest for the Liberal Party's primeministerial nomination in 1970 was between two serious candidates: incumbent prime minister Bailey Graham, a member of the party's moderate wing, and former governor of California Oda Masaaki, a member of the party's conservative wing. The primeministerial primary campaign between the two men was hard-fought and relatively even; by the start of the Liberal Convention in August 1970, the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Graham defeated Masaaki by a narrow margin on the first ballot at the 1970 Liberal National Convention in Nellis City. Graham chose to re-nominate deputy prime minister Cole Jordan as his running mate.

Conservative/National Party Nominations
The Conservative Party (Kingdom of Monsters) feared that the Conservative vote would be split and decided to form a coalition National Party in late August 1970, this would help the Conservative and National achieve a larger majority in the General Election, the coalition decided to nominate ex-secretary of Agriculture and former Conservative MP Rudy Carter of the National Party and Conservative Party leader Hamprecht Schäfer as his running mate.

Conservative Party Nominations
Governor Hamprecht Schäfer of Uthumbria was the odds-on favorite to win his party's nomination for president after nearly beating John Baker just four years earlier. Schäfer dominated the primaries early. Fujioka Naoko from the Home F.D posed the strongest challenge to Schäfer with his victories in the Sunrise City and Nellis primaries, but it was not enough to turn the tide. Schäfer won the nomination on the first round at the 1970 Conservative National Convention in Industria, Industria, in July, then chose Naoko (his top rival) as his running mate.

After the start of the Conservative-National Coalition, Schäfer was made Rudy Carter's running mate.

National Party Nominations
The National Party had decided to make Rudy Carter, fomer secretary of agriculutre and former Conservative Party member, their candidate, before they could choose a deputy Prime Minister, the Conservative Party approached them to make a coalition, since Carter did not have a running mate, he chose to make Conservative Party leader Hamprecht Schäfer his running mate.

Campaign
Under royal election laws, Graham and Carter received 29.4 million G each, They were not allowed to spend any other money. Graham and Carter each spent about $15 million G on television advertising. Carter ended up spending $29.2 million G in total, Graham 29.4 million G.

The 1980 election marked a political realignment, with Carter gaining in former Democratic strongholds such as the South and white ethnics (dubbed "Carter Liberals."

Immediately after the conclusion of the primaries, a Anderson Poll held that Reagan was ahead, with 51% of voters upset by Graham's handling of the Primeministership. One analysis of the election has suggested that "Both Graham and Carter were perceived negatively by a majority of the electorate.". While the three leading candidates (Graham, Grimond and Carter) were religious Christians, Graham had the most support of evangelical Christians according to a Anderson poll. However, in the end, Mark Trent's Moral Majority lobbying group is credited with giving Carter two-thirds of the monster angelican vote. According to Graham: "that autumn [1970] a group headed by Mark Trent purchased 10 million G in commercials on rural radio and TV to brand me as a traitor to the King and no longer a Christian."

The election of 1980 was a key turning point in Monster politics. It signaled the new electoral power of the suburbs and the Sun Belt. Reagan's success as a conservative would initiate a realigning of the parties, as Classical Liberals and Liberal Conservatives would either leave politics or change party affiliations through the 1970s and 1980s to leave the parties much more ideologically polarized. While during John Marcus's 1960 campaign, many voters saw his warnings about a too-powerful government as hyperbolic and only 30% of the electorate agreed that government was too powerful, by 1970 a majority of Monsters believed that government held too much power.

Promises
Carter promised a restoration of the nation's military strength, at the same time 60% of Monsters polled felt defense spending was too low. Carter also promised an end to "trust me government" and to restore economic health by implementing a supply-side economic policy. Reagan promised a balanced budget within three years (which he said would be "the beginning of the end of inflation"), accompanied by a 30% reduction in tax rates over those same years. With respect to the economy, Carter famously said, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Bailey Graham loses his. "Carter also criticized the "CORE profit tax" that Graham and Parliament enacted that year in regards to geotermal production and promised to attempt to repeal it as prime minister. The tax was not a tax on profits, but on the difference between the price control-mandated price and the market price.

On the issue of women's rights there was much division, with many feminists frustrated with Graham, the only major-party candidate who supported the Equal Rights Act. After a bitter Convention fight between National and Conservative feminists and antifeminists the National-Conservative Coalition dropped their forty-year endorsement of the ERA. Carter, however, announced his dedication to women's rights and his intention to, if elected, appoint women to his cabinet and the first female justice to the Supreme Court. He also pledged to work with all 50 state governors to combat discrimination against women and to equalize federal laws as an alternative to the ERA. Carter was convinced to give an endorsement of women's rights in his nomination acceptance speech.

Graham was criticized by his own aides for not having a "grand plan" for the recovery of the economy, nor did he ever make any campaign promises; he often criticized Carter's economic recovery plan, but did not create one of his own in response.

Opinion poll summary
Summary of the final polling results before the general election.