Lochac alternative Crown selection polling

This poll was open from May 24th until June 23rd, 2024. All adult members of Lochac were emailed invitations to respond, with reminders being sent after one and three weeks. A total of 585 people responded.

Prior to this poll, a number of broad classes of competition were identified, and published at https://lochac.sca.org/possible-ways-of-choosing-crown/. Members were invited to discuss the arguments for an against the various approaches through a forum at https://altcrown.lochac.sca.org. The overarching goal of this poll was to determine which of the broad approaches were of enough interest to be worth developing into detailed descriptions of alternative Crown selection processes, and which were not worth pursuing.

Respondents were asked to rate their interest in each broad category on a scale:

  1. I'm certain this idea isn’t worth exploring
  2. Doubt this would work
  3. Undecided
  4. There’s probably a way this could work
  5. I'm definitely interested in seeing a detailed proposal in this category
Respondents were asked their level of interest in tournaments testing other skills than heavy combat
Lottery
273112538367
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Total negativeTotal positive
385 (65.5%)150 (25.5%)
Election
2051396512455
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Total negativeTotal positive
344 (58.5%)179 (30.4%)
Rapier tournament
383567212236
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Total negativeTotal positive
73 (12.4%)448 (76.2%)
Archery tournament
535086212187
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Total negativeTotal positive
103 (17.5%)399 (67.9%)
Arts and Sciences
78118101166125
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Total negativeTotal positive
196 (33.3%)291 (49.5%)
War
14716110211662
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Total negativeTotal positive
308 (52.4%)178 (30.3%)
Prowess over a number of events
587881193178
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Total negativeTotal positive
136 (23.1%)371 (63.1%)
For tournaments of champions, respondents were first asked whether they favoured a model where the contestants and the Crown candidates could choose each other, or were randomly paired up. Then they were asked their interest in four different types of tournament contested by champions.
Champions and Candidates choose each other
6963102210144
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Total negativeTotal positive
132 (22.4%)354 (60.2%)
Champions and Candidates randomly matched
16713011213544
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Total negativeTotal positive
297 (50.5%)179 (30.4%)
Tournament of champions - Heavy format
4329105216195
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Total negativeTotal positive
72 (12.2%)411 (69.9%)
Tournament of champions -Rapier format
6135103236153
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Total negativeTotal positive
96 (16.3%)389 (66.2%)
Tournament of champions - Archery format
6654113237118
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Total negativeTotal positive
120 (20.4%)355 (60.4%)
Tournament of champions - Arts & sciences
11610812316180
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Total negativeTotal positive
224 (38.1%)241 (41%)
Finally, respondents were asked their level of interest in seeing the eligibility criteria for Crown candidates be reviewed, regardless of whether an alternative means of competing for Crown was adopted.
Review eligibility criteria for Crown
5028168192150
12345
Total negativeTotal positive
78 (13.3%)342 (58.2%)