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

Borghesi, Christian; Bouchaud, Jean‐Philippe

doi:10.1140/epjb/e2010-00151-1

Cited by 47 publications

(118 citation statements)

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“…It has been shown that, by using an appropriate rescaling of election data, the distributions of votes and turnouts approximately follow a Gaussian distribution (24). Let W i be the number of votes for the winning party and N i be the number of voters in any unit i.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Let W i be the number of votes for the winning party and N i be the number of voters in any unit i. A rescaling function is given by the logarithmic vote rate ν i = log Ni − Wi Wi (24). In units where W i ≥ N i (because of errors in counting or fraud) or W i = 0, ν i is not defined, and the unit is omitted from our analysis.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this case, the deviations from approximate Gaussianity are because of a significant heterogeneity within the country. In the particular case of A simple way to compare data from different elections in different countries on a similar aggregation level is to present the distributions of the logarithmic vote rates ν i of the winning parties as rescaled distributions with zero mean and unit variance (24). Large deviations from other countries can be seen for Uganda and Russia with the plain eye.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the central point of this work, we propose a parametric model to statistically quantify to which extent fraudulent processes, such as ballot stuffing, may have influenced the observed election results. Remarkably, under the assumption of coherent geographic voting patterns (24,25), the parametric model results do not depend significantly on the aggregation level of the election data or the size of the data sample.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In particular, several approximate statistical laws of how vote and turnout are distributed have been identified (20)(21)(22), and some of them are shown to be valid across several countries (23,24). It is tempting to think of deviations from these approximate statistical laws as potential indicators for election irregularities, which are valid cross-nationally.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities

Klimek

Yegorov

Hanel

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

116

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Democratic societies are built around the principle of free and fair elections, and that each citizen's vote should count equally. National elections can be regarded as large-scale social experiments, where people are grouped into usually large numbers of electoral districts and vote according to their preferences. The large number of samples implies statistical consequences for the polling results, which can be used to identify election irregularities. Using a suitable data representation, we find that vote distributions of elections with alleged fraud show a kurtosis substantially exceeding the kurtosis of normal elections, depending on the level of data aggregation. As an example, we show that reported irregularities in recent Russian elections are, indeed, well-explained by systematic ballot stuffing. We develop a parametric model quantifying the extent to which fraudulent mechanisms are present. We formulate a parametric test detecting these statistical properties in election results. Remarkably, this technique produces robust outcomes with respect to the resolution of the data and therefore, allows for cross-country comparisons.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 96%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities

Klimek

Yegorov

Hanel

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

116

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Crises and Collective Socio-Economic Phenomena: Simple Models and Challenges

2013

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Financial and economic history is strewn with bubbles and crashes, booms and busts, crises and upheavals of all sorts. Understanding the origin of these events is arguably one of the most important problems in economic theory. In this paper, we review recent efforts to include heterogeneities and interactions in models of decision. We argue that the so-called Random Field Ising model (rfim) provides a unifying framework to account for many collective socio-economic phenomena that lead to sudden ruptures and crises. We discuss different models that can capture potentially destabilising self-referential feedback loops, induced either by herding, i.e. reference to peers, or trending, i.e. reference to the past, and that account for some of the phenomenology missing in the standard models. We discuss some empirically testable predictions of these models, for example robust signatures of rfim-like herding effects, or the logarithmic decay of spatial correlations of voting patterns. One of the most striking result, inspired by statistical physics methods, is that Adam Smith's invisible hand can fail badly at solving simple coordination problems. We also insist on the issue of time-scales, that can be extremely long in some cases, and prevent socially optimal equilibria from being reached. As a theoretical challenge, the study of so-called "detailed-balance" violating decision rules is needed to decide whether conclusions based on current models (that all assume detailed-balance) are indeed robust and generic. Contents

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A spatial analysis of parliamentary elections in Sweden 1985–2018

et al. 2021

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Understanding where and why political change is happening in a country is a fundamental issue in political geography. While electoral choice is individual, it is influenced by various sociological, cultural, and geographical factors postulated to create ‘cultural fields’ influencing individual decision-making. Here, we test the cultural field hypothesis on Sweden, an important democracy of Europe long regarded as an example by other European countries, by studying the middle-long-term evolution of the spatial structure of political choice over the last three decades. In testing the cultural field hypothesis, an analysis of spatial correlations is combined with groupings of Swedish municipalities into larger communities reflecting the similarity of their voting profiles. We show that spatial correlations decay logarithmically, which is a sign of long-ranged interactions, and also demonstrate that Sweden can be divided into three or four large and stable politico-cultural communities. More precisely, a transition from three to four main politico-cultural communities is observed. The fourth community, which emerged in the early 2000s is of particular interest as it is characterized by a large vote-share for the Sweden Democrats, while almost all other parties underperform. Moreover, the Swedish electoral landscape seems to be increasingly fragmenting even when the voting profiles of the municipalities over the country are slowly converging.

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

Cited by 47 publications

References 46 publications

Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities

Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities

Crises and Collective Socio-Economic Phenomena: Simple Models and Challenges

A spatial analysis of parliamentary elections in Sweden 1985–2018

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