Securing Votes

Make sure your sim is in a good mood, I like to make sure my politician sim is feeling confident. I'll generally do one or two of the other political discussion options first. Something about talk about/hype issues? Can't recall off hand, but do that one first, and if it goes through and the other sim reacts positively to that, then I'll try to secure the vote. But if that first one fails, then I don't try to get the vote right then, because it absolutely won't work.

I've never been super great friends with any sims first. I just make sure my sim is in a good mood and ask one or two other political career-related questions first to gauge my changes of success.