Influence of a political scandal on voting in a simple model

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.