2012/10/31 by Arda Halu, Kun Zhao, Andrea Baronchelli +1 · 108 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Economics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #General election #Law #Microeconomics #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Outcome (game theory) #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Sociology #Split-ticket voting #Victory #cs.SI #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/102/16002
published in Europhysics Letters (EPL) 102(1), 16002 (Institute of Physics) · (5 pages, 5 figures)
openalex publication_date 2013/04/01 · arxiv created 2013/04/11 · arxiv updated 2015/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Many networks do not live in isolation but are strongly interacting, with profound consequences on their dynamics. Here, we consider the case of two interacting social networks and, in the context of a simple model, we address the case of political elections. Each network represents a competing party and every agent on the election day can choose to be either active in one of the two networks (vote for the corresponding party) or to be inactive in both (not vote). The opinion dynamics during the election campaign is described through a simulated annealing algorithm. We find that for a large region of the parameter space the result of the competition between the two parties allows for the existence of pluralism in the society, where both parties have a finite share of the votes. The central result is that a densely connected social network is key for the final victory of a party. However, small committed minorities can play a crucial role, and even reverse the election outcome.