Evolution of Electoral Preferences for a Regime of Three Political Parties

Abstract

In this article, we use a discrete system to study the opinion dynamics regarding the electoral preferences of a nontendentious group of agents. To measure the level of preference, a continuous opinion space is used, in which the preference (opinion) can evolve from any political option, to any other; for a regime of three parties, a circle is the convenient space. To model a nonbiased society, new agents are considered. Besides their opinion, they have a new attribute: an individual iterative monoparametric map that imitates a process of internal reflection, allowing them to update their opinion in their own way. These iterative maps introduce six fixed points on the opinion space; the points’ stability depends on the sign of the parameter. When the latter is positive, three attractors are identified with political options, while the repulsors are identified with the antioptions (preferences diametrically opposed to each political choice). In this new model, pairs of agents interact only if their respective opinions are alike; a positive number called confidence bound is introduced with this purpose; if opinions are similar, they update their opinion considering each other’s opinion, while if they are not alike, each agent updates her opinion considering only her individual map. In addition, agents give a certain level of trust (weight) to other agent’s opinions; this results in a positive stochastic matrix of weights which models the social network. The model can be reduced to a pair of coupled nonlinear difference equations, making extracting analytical results possible: a theorem on the conditions governing the existence of consensus in this new artificial society. Some numerical simulations are provided, exemplifying the analytical results.