Well, at the risk of boring you all with part of my own education (I'm a politics graduate, and am tangentially involved in a campaign in real life now) one of the problems of any democracy is "Mixed Motivation Voting". What this means is that you don't necessarily know what the electorate means when they put a tick on the box to a simple party/politician ticket. They could be agreeing with that candidates positions, what they think those positions are (but may not be), with the fact that they aren't Politician Y instead (a vote for change itself), that they get a sense of personal "likeability" from that person... and so forth.
Now, I share an Alliance with Alaster, who is I believe far and away the current leader in votes; thus an awful lot of those Youngs we've seen today (and I did see it too) will have voted for him. But I can absolutely swear that Alaster hasn't encouraged, and probably doesn't even know where those votes are coming from either.
I would also just like to add that Escaflowne, the current second placed Candidate I also don't believe is lying, and is also genuinely innocent of where the votes came from too. But I want to use Alaster as an example, and because I'm just as in the dark despite being closer to him, it will be more illustrative.
So... I offer you a couple of suggestions to illustrate some of the possible reasons for such a voting response;
1.) It's a positive vote for Alaster, because they actually want him as Lord Protector.
2.) It's a positive vote for Alaster, but because he's their friend.
3.) It's a negative vote against one, or many of the current front runners, because they don't like their policies. (This will likely be my final vote, as Alaster does a lot things, but what he mostly doesn't do is cause any harm, or discord.)
4.) It's a negative vote against another candidate, out of personal animus.
5.) It's a vote against the entire Lord Protector system, in the hopes that constant talk of pants will discredit it. Or the EMs who thought of it.
6.) Or it's an attempt to vote against a serious Lord Protector, but they are positively voting for a crazy pants stealing one because they think that will be fun. Or not involve being micro-managed like a po-faced protector might try to do. They want to positively re-define the role itself.
7.) Alaster has promised them all pants, and winter is coming so they think they will need as many pairs as possible...
Which is it? As I say, none of us have any clue! You can of course add plenty of your own guesses; Now, I know there's a lot of debate about whether "Alaster" and "Escaflowne" or even "Aron" the characters would ever think about things like this; They have their own agenda to push in game, from within in their role played character. However once you take the role of Lord Protector, these real life mixed motivations will still exist and, and this is vitally important, are going to continue to shape future events, so you had better be able to deal with them out of character.
Why? Pick a potential reason from the above, and now think about what it would mean at an EM event. Are the people behind the Trial accounts going to stop being motivated by what ever it is they care about? If it's examples 4 & 5 for instance, they're going to probably try and grief events, or at the very least, disrupt you whilst taking the Lord Protectors role. And that's going to ruin it for everyone else. Possibly 1 & 2 would have a similar ruinous effect, but through the mechanisms of claimed "Bias" and "Favouritism" instead...
In effect, the winner is going to be a Mini-Event Manager, will be taking a meta-game role of conflict and crisis management. Which is why I've subtly tried to raise this issues with my own campaign in turn. We're going to have to listen to what people want, and our characters are going to have to learn to stay balanced on top of them. Or we can pull the entire edifice down on our heads by being unwilling to compromise, or openly discuss our issues outside of our in game characters, and make the role completely unworkable; how soon after election when will the first "Recall The Protector!" demand come do we think, because they weren't what they thought they were voting for, in theory or practice or both?
Either way we are committing ourselves to defining the in game experience of a huge group of people whose motivations we aren't sure of for months ahead. And I don't think we have the right to do that, just because we like our own policies best of course...
And I hope you, the electorate are seriously considering this problem too. Theory is all well and good, but which candidates will pragmatically lead to the best future for as many of us as possible?
I know i've had fun just participating, even if i lose it was a good ride 
