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:

I'm certain this idea isn’t worth exploring
Doubt this would work
Undecided
There’s probably a way this could work
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

273	112	53	83	67

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
385 (65.5%)	150 (25.5%)

Election

205	139	65	124	55

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
344 (58.5%)	179 (30.4%)

Rapier tournament

38	35	67	212	236

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
73 (12.4%)	448 (76.2%)

Archery tournament

53	50	86	212	187

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
103 (17.5%)	399 (67.9%)

Arts and Sciences

78	118	101	166	125

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
196 (33.3%)	291 (49.5%)

War

147	161	102	116	62

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
308 (52.4%)	178 (30.3%)

Prowess over a number of events

58	78	81	193	178

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total 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

69	63	102	210	144

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
132 (22.4%)	354 (60.2%)

Champions and Candidates randomly matched

167	130	112	135	44

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
297 (50.5%)	179 (30.4%)

Tournament of champions - Heavy format

43	29	105	216	195

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
72 (12.2%)	411 (69.9%)

Tournament of champions -Rapier format

61	35	103	236	153

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
96 (16.3%)	389 (66.2%)

Tournament of champions - Archery format

66	54	113	237	118

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
120 (20.4%)	355 (60.4%)

Tournament of champions - Arts & sciences

116	108	123	161	80

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total 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

50	28	168	192	150

1	2	3	4	5

Total negative	Total positive
78 (13.3%)	342 (58.2%)