It’s August, and that means we are officially at the lowest point of the calendar year as a consequence of the summer lull. This month notably saw sinkers substantially outperform both feeders and User Created Regions (UCRs) for the third time in a row, while only a handful of regions remained in the green.
Unsurprisingly, this month has seen a slump of -6.6% in the total World Assembly population, with a month-adjusted real change of -3.8% (this means we fell 3.8% lower than what we would normally expect for August). Sinkers fared the best at -1.3%, with feeders and UCRs trailing far behind at -6.7% and -7.1% respectively.
No region particularly stood out this month, with the possible exception of the Confederacy of Layem, renowned for once being the home of the infamous nation of Drew Durnil; they experienced a staggering -29.9% change in their World Assembly population in the past month.
On the opposite end, The Free Nations Region, The Leftist Assembly and Europe lead the pack with each growing by more than 2%, being closely trailed by sinkers Balder and Lazarus on 1.3% and 1.2% respectively.
With the new ‘real change’ statistic, it has become much easier to understand true movements that are breaking from historical trends. Looking at August, it appears that NationStates is still rebalancing after the Drewpocalypse of over four months ago.
The real change of -3.8% in August was effectively identical to the -3.7% value observed in July. While September tends to be the month where numbers begin to turn around as the American school summer break reaches its conclusion, a continuation of this trend would see September remain in the negative and only in October will numbers begin to stabilise again.
However, I predict that this will not be the case. We can rationally assume that the effects of the Drewpocalypse will diminish over time and, thus, the real fall in the World Assembly population should narrow with time. In essence, I believe we have finally reached a turning point, but the randomness of these numbers makes for a difficult game of guessing.
