Spatial correlations in vote statistics: a diffusive field model for decision-making

2010/03/14 by Christian Borghesi, C. Borghesi, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud +1 · 2 voices · 3 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.data-an #physics.soc-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1140/epjb/e2010-00151-1

18 pages, 5 figures; added sociophysics references.

arxiv published 2010/03/14 · arxiv created 2010/04/27 · openalex publication_date 2010/05/17 · arxiv updated 2015/05/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We study the statistics of turnout rates and results of the French elections since 1992. We find that the distribution of turnout rates across towns is surprisingly stable over time. The spatial correlation of the turnout rates, or of the fraction of winning votes, is found to decay logarithmically with the distance between towns. Based on these empirical observations and on the analogy with a two-dimensional random diffusion equation, we propose that individual decisions can be rationalised in terms of an underlying "cultural" field, that locally biases the decision of the population of a given region, on top of an idiosyncratic, town-dependent field, with short range correlations. Using symmetry considerations and a set of plausible assumptions, we suggest that this cultural field obeys a random diffusion equation.

Citations

• Threshold Models of Collective Behavior
• Statistical physics of social dynamics

Cited by

• Empirical Analysis and Agent-Based Modeling of the Lithuanian Parliamentary Elections
• Crises and Collective Socio-Economic Phenomena: Simple Models and Challenges
• Approach to consensus in models of continuous-opinion dynamics: A study inspired by the physics of granular gases

Discussions

• it's hard, but it's a good mental model with modest empirical success arxiv.org/abs/1003.2807 [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/1003.2807 [bsky, 1 points, 2 comments]

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