Influence of a political scandal on voting in a simple model

Michel Droz and Andrzej Pȩkalski

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2020, vol. 559, issue C

Abstract: A simple computer model describing the influence of a political scandal on a voting process in a two-party society, is presented. We discuss the role of three parameters charactering a scandal — its magnitude (volume of coverage in the media), time it occupies place in the media and the openness of the society. We show that the dependence of the magnitude of a scandal needed for the opposition to take power on the parameters of the model exhibits two regimes — fast and slow changes. Increasing presence of a scandal in the media for a very long time, as well as increasing the openness of the society might not produce a noticeably different effects than a shorter one. Comparison of the model with the data for president Nixon support during the Watergate affair, shows reasonably good agreement.

Keywords: Voting; Sociophysics; Opinion formation; Monte Carlo simulations; Political scandal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:559:y:2020:i:c:s0378437120305355

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2020.125027

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