Distribution Of Votes Research Articles

After 2018 Bolsonaro victory, is a 2022 remake feasible?

We propose a contagion model to describe the evolution of the political voting trends in Brazil after the dictatorship from 1985 to nowadays. We consider a fully-connected population divided in two voting groups, left and right. Each group includes three kinds of agents, sensitives, inflexibles and radicals. While sensitives may shift their left or right voting, inflexibles and radicals do not. Excluding political interactions with radicals, the model has one interaction parameter, and we found the values which reproduce all the voting outcomes of past presidential elections from 1989 till 2018. As an alternative approach to explain 2018 election, we found that adding an empty third voting group overlapping left and right, the populist voting group, can also yield Bolsonaro 2018 victory. The initial filling of the populist group is triggered by the breaking of the interaction barrier between sensitives and radicals, which had prevailed for decades. Within each voting group, some of the interacting pairs sensitive/radical recast the sensitive into a populist. This status change from sensitive to populist allows the populist to interact with sensitives of both left and right, thus creating an additional source of filling of the populist group. The process is shown to yield the 2018 55% for Bolsonaro. From the 2018 distribution of votes, we evaluate the parameter changes which recover the recent 2021 poll yielding a victory of Lula against Bolsonaro at a score of 64/36. Thus, we compare the results for the two scenarios, with and without populists, for 2018 election and 2021 poll. Regarding the two possible scenarios for the 2018 Bolsonaro victory, we discuss about a hypothetic Lula/Bolsonaro 2022 second round voting and the requirements to yield either Lula or Bolsonaro victory in 2022. Both scenarios are feasible.

BargCrEx: A System for Bargaining Based Aggregation of Crowd and Expert Opinions in Crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing and crowd voting systems are being increasingly used in societal, industry, and academic problems (labeling, recommendations, social choice, etc.) due to their possibility to exploit “wisdom of crowd” and obtain good quality solutions, and/or voter satisfaction, with high cost-efficiency. However, the decisions based on crowd vote aggregation do not guarantee high-quality results due to crowd voter data quality. Additionally, such decisions often do not satisfy the majority of voters due to data heterogeneity (multimodal or uniform vote distributions) and/or outliers, which cause traditional aggregation procedures (e.g., central tendency measures) to propose decisions with low voter satisfaction. In this research, we propose a system for the integration of crowd and expert knowledge in a crowdsourcing setting with limited resources. The system addresses the problem of sparse voting data by using machine learning models (matrix factorization and regression) for the estimation of crowd and expert votes/grades. The problem of vote aggregation under multimodal or uniform vote distributions is addressed by the inclusion of expert votes and aggregation of crowd and expert votes based on optimization and bargaining models (Kalai–Smorodinsky and Nash) usually used in game theory. Experimental evaluation on real world and artificial problems showed that the bargaining-based aggregation outperforms the traditional methods in terms of cumulative satisfaction of experts and crowd. Additionally, the machine learning models showed satisfactory predictive performance and enabled cost reduction in the process of vote collection.

From the Lega Nord to Salvini’s League: changing everything to change nothing?

ABSTRACT The article aims to retrace the transformations of the Lega Nord under the leadership of Matteo Salvini by focusing on the analysis of key dimensions such as: the ideology and issue positions, the territorial distribution of vote, and the party internal organization. The actual Lega of Salvini is undoubtedly different from the party of the origin. Regionalist claims and a fluid ideological trait have turned into far-right, nationalistic and anti-E.U. perspective, which allowed to drain votes from new and different socio-geographic contexts, even without a durable electoral rootedness. The article also highlights how the recent season of success for the Lega introduced elements of uncertainty in the strategies, alliances, and the party identity itself during a critical period of the Italian politics and under the effect of the pandemic crisis.

Polarization, abstention, and the median voter theorem

The median voter theorem has long been the default model of voter behavior and candidate choice. While contemporary work on the distribution of political opinion has emphasized polarization and an increasing gap between the “left” and the “right” in democracies, the median voter theorem presents a model of anti-polarization: competing candidates move to the center of the ideological distribution to maximize vote share, regardless of the underlying ideological distribution of voters. These anti-polar results, however, largely depend on the “singled-peakedness” of voter preferences, an assumption that is rapidly losing relevance in the age of polarization. This article presents a model of voter choice that examines three potential mechanisms that can undermine this finding: a relative cost of voting that deters voters who are sufficiently indifferent to both candidates, ideologically motivated third-party alternatives that attract extreme voters, and a bimodal distribution of voter ideology. Under reasonable sets of conditions and empirically observed voter opinion distributions, these mechanisms can be sufficient to cause strategically minded candidates to fail to converge to the center, or to even become more polarized than their electorate.

On the Correlation Between Vote Distributions and Human Rights

On the Correlation Between Vote Distributions and Human Rights

The Distribution of Justices' Votes and Countering National Disunity

The Distribution of Justices' Votes and Countering National Disunity

Distribution-Adapted Model for Helpful Vote Prediction

The number of helpful votes on a review is an essential indicator of how much impact the review has on other customers in electronic commerce. Therefore, predicting the number of helpful votes is an important task. Regression analysis and Tobit modeling are typical methods of prediction. Those methods come from the same initial assumption that the number of helpful votes follows a normal distribution on any dataset. However, the assumption is not usually confirmed, and the distribution of the helpful votes often follows other distributions. This paper proposes a framework for investigating the feasibility of building a model that predicts the number of helpful votes according to the distribution of the number of helpful votes. On top of that, considering the review age, we propose an adaptive window size sampling method to evaluate the model on review datasets sorted chronologically. The experimental results validated that the model adapting to the best approximate distribution gives a significant improvement compared to the baseline models. In addition, model evaluation using the adaptive window size sampling method has significant impacts on the performance on large datasets.

ОПЫТ СРАВНИТЕЛЬНОГО ПРОСТРАНСТВЕННОГО АНАЛИЗА ЭЛЕКТОРАЛЬНОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ В РЕГИОНАХ ГОСУДАРСТВ - СОСЕДЕЙ РОССИИ

The article contains comparative spatial analysis of the electoral behavior of residents in regions of Russia's neighbor states. Problems of electoral behavior often become the subject of studies. However, the electoral behavior of residents of foreign border regions usually attract less attention. Moreover, spatial analysis is proving to be a promising area in studying the electoral behaviour as it makes it possible to identify patterns and the neighborhood effect and conduct a mathematically sound analysis of phenomena. The authors aim to identify and compare the patterns of electoral behavior in the regions of Russia's neighbor states based on the results of the parliamentary elections in 2007-2020, using the methods and tools of spatial analysis. By means of a specially developed comparative digital two-dimensional matrix reflecting the positions of political parties, a number of cartograms showing the distribution of votes for similar political forces in each electoral cycle were created, which made it possible to identify general trends in the transformation of electoral behavior in the regions of states bordering Russia. The article reveals a significant differentiation in electoral areas in terms of support for anti-Russian and pro-Russian parties in the period under review. At the same time, a dynamic comparison of the electoral results of parties during several electoral cycles showed that diversity decreased after 2014. In addition, indicators of spatial dependence show the similarity of political preferences of residents of neighboring regions. Moreover, the stability of many identified territorial clusters over time was revealed.

ГЕОГРАФИЧЕСКИЙ ФАВОРИТИЗМ ПАРТИЙ И ИЗБИРАТЕЛЬНЫХ СИСТЕМ

The task of this work is to identify the phenomenon of geographical favouritism in parties and electoral systems, which consists in the degree of the tendency of the latter to territorial differentiation. In our opinion, this is a mandatory step towards finding ways to take into account the degree of spatial distortion of the electoral and party systems of public choice, which in the future should enable multiple comparative electoral and geographical studies. Based on the analysis of all existing electoral systems, it is concluded that proportional elements reduce the potential of geographical favoritism of electoral systems, while majoritarian ones, on the contrary, strengthen it. In the article, electoral systems are distributed according to the level of potential geographical favoritism: it turns out to be the highest in majority systems, and the lowest in proportional and intermediate-average systems, respectively, in semiproportional and preferential ones. The effect of geographical favouritism in mixed (compensatory) systems is close to the result in proportional systems with several districts. In non-compensatory systems, it depends on the effect of the majoritarian component. In the work, the elements or properties of electoral systems are divided into two categories: those that strengthen or weaken geographical favouritism. Having estimated the number of certain elements or properties present in a particular electoral legislation, we can conclude about the degree of geographical favouritism of the electoral procedure used in the country. Two variants of calculating the index of geographical favouritism are proposed, which is necessary for comparative electoral-geographical research, since it allows comparing election results without correction for distortions of the regional distribution of votes. The first index is more suitable for analyzing more similar electoral processes, say, several cycles in the same state, and the second is for comparing fundamentally different electoral systems.

Elections and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria. An Appraisal of the 2019 General Elections

This article presents a detailed appraisal of the administration of the 2019 general elections with a special focus on polling station information, set up, the voting and counting process, conduct of security officials and declaration of results. Findings show an improvement in the conduct of elections and hence a deepening of democracy in Nigeria. These improvements include the use of card readers and greater participation by stakeholders including observer groups, CSOs and the media. Some of the challenges include disruptions occasioned by the postponement of the general elections, low voter turnouts, logistical challenges, late arrivals of materials and officials, the cumbersome voting process for uneducated and rural voters, weak capacity of ad-hoc staff, voter inducement, shortage of materials and personnel, and challenges with smart card readers. Others are lack of special provisions for people with disabilities, inadequate security in some cases, too many political parties listed on the ballot paper, high number of invalid votes, non-adherence to electoral guidelines, uneven distribution of voters and underage voting. Recommendations arising from the paper include reform of the Electoral Act to improve transparency and efficiency through the use of ICT tools, continuing voter education, capacity development for INEC/ad-hoc staff and security officials, improving elections logistics and smart card reader functionality. Similarly recommended are enhanced funding for INEC, ensuring strict adherence to guidelines, continuous civic and voter registration, adequate provision for people living with disabilities and effective security planning. Keywords : Elections administration, Electoral Management Body, Democracy, Governance, Nigeria DOI: 10.7176/DCS/12-1-03 Publication date: January 31 st 2022

Zmiana sympatii wyborczych w regionie zachodniej Ukrainy według wyników głosowania podczas wyborów parlamentarnych w 2019 roku

The aim of the study is to compare the results of electoral sympathies of Ukrainian voters with the prevailing trends on this issue in Europe. We analyzed Western Ukraine regions (9 units in total) in relation to constituencies to identify the relationship between voting results and a wide range of variables that define the regional socio-economic, historical and socio-cultural context. The conducted research is based on the data of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine, including the data of different territorial levels of coverage (polling station – constituency – administrative region). The spatial multi-vector study was based on the analysis of the following variables: support for the “Servant of the People” party, support for other parliamentary parties in the 2019 elections, distribution of votes between centre-right and liberal-centre parliamentary parties, support/opposition of the so-called “old” and “new” parliamentary parties during the 2019 voting, as well as a spatial analysis of voter turnout. In addition, methods of spatial analysis and differentiation, generalization and forecasting were used. The results of the study showed an unconventionally low voter turnout, which is not typical for the studied region, significant fluctuations in support of the unprecedented election leader (the “Servant of the People” party), orientation to young parliamentary parties as a hope for change of the inner state of the country. The region was marked by significantly higher support for centre-right parties, which is a traditional phenomenon for this territory, and generally lower support for non-standard liberal views.

The analysis of the dynamics of the electorate system by using q-distribution-a case study

In this work we study the system of the votes, the mechanism of the electoral support formation, and also the elements of its dynamics, by analyzing the data from several election processes in Albania. Firstly, we evidence the specific features and the characteristics of the distributions of votes through a descriptive approach, and next we use those findings to identify the nature of the elementary processes of the agreement, the defects of the system and dynamical issues. The distributions of the votes for the majority or majority-like election as by polling stations reference results a two-parts function. The part of the distribution located in the small vote fraction fits to a power law or to a q-exponential function, therefore the foremost factor of the electoral support for the subjects populating this zone is based in the preferential attachment rule, with some modification. Consequently, the small subjects or independent candidates, realize their electoral attractiveness based on the individual performance. Also, their voters act rationally and usually gather sufficient information before deciding to support them. The bell-shaped part of the distribution which describes the votes of the candidates of the main parties, fits better to the q-gaussian functions. In this case, electoral support is affected strongly by the political activists (militants) which harvest local influences to convict people producing an extra support for the candidates of big parties, regardless of their performance and electoral values. This physiognomy is characteristic for all legislative and administrative majority voting or other majority-like elections as practically behave the closed-lists elections of 2009, 2013, 2017 and also the semi-opened list of the 2021. The distributions of the closed-list votes in the administrative elections are mostly of the exponential or q-exponential type. Also, the distributions based on the data from electoral constituencies which include many polling stations resulted q-exponentials for all types of elections. We connected the q-exponential form of the distribution with the electoral network failures, system deficiencies and heterogeneity effects. In 2021, the distributions of the votes for subjects is obtained similar to the typical recent majority voting distribution, a mix of the power law and q-gaussian functions. The distribution of the votes for the candidates on the semi-open list for those elections resulted a mix of two q-exponentials. We associated this last with the difficulties of the voters to understand new electoral rules and additional other causes of the non-electoral nature. Also, the electorate network might have suffered extra irregularity issues due to the inadequate sizes of elections units, etc. The distributions of the votes for the two main parties are found q-gaussians with q ∼ 1.32 and q ∼ 1.57 for the right and the left wing respectively. Based on the non-stationarity level measured by the q-value, significant redistribution events are expected for the left-wing network, whereas the right-wing network would experience fewer changes in ceteris paribus socio-electoral conditions. Interestingly, the mix of the votes for two main political parties has produced a q-gaussian with q=1.004, and subsequently, the joint system is found in a more relaxed state. Therefore, the compound network including two main parties is likely to not undergo significant redistribution of the votes in the near future. This means that the small subjects or the fresh-born ones are not likely to cause changes on the system. Based on the deductions for electoral agreement formation, we used our recently introduced q-opinion approach to model the electoral opinion formation. In this model, the q-opinion produces an additional term that multiplies the modified preferential attachment probability for the link establishment. Herein, the q-parameter is calculated by using an ad-hoc formula involving the performance of the candidate as utility function, which associates the agreement behavior as the response, with the candidate performance as the offer or the cause factor. The quantity q henceforth acts as activation-inhibition switch of the extra utility involved in the q-opinion model, and particularly it provides a nonzero voter’s support for the high-performance opponent candidates. The model has reproduced the distributions analyzed in this study. It resulted that many voters in this electorate system act rationally, despite their affiliations.

Poisson voting games under proportional rule

We analyze strategic voting under proportional rule and two parties, embedding the basic spatial model into the Poisson framework of population uncertainty. We prove that there exists a unique Nash equilibrium. We show that it is characterized by a cutpoint in the policy space that is always located between the average of the two parties’ positions and the median of the distribution of voters’ types. We also show that, as the expected number of voters goes to infinity, the equilibrium converges to that of the case with deterministic population size.

FORMATION AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE CITY COUNCILS IN THE 1870–1880s AND THEIR SOCIAL STRUCTURE (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE VLADIMIR, NIZHNY NOVGOROD AND TULA PROVINCES)

The article examines the procedure for the formation of city dumas in the towns of Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir and Tula governorates in the 1870–1880s on the basis of archival materials. The author studies the electorate, their distribution by categories in accordance with the Municipal statutes of 1870, as well as the estate composition of councilors in city dumas.
 
 As a result of the reform of 1870, not all urban residents received the right to vote. The property qualification gave the opportunity to participate in the elections only to the most affluent part of the population. Distribution of voters into three categories, depending on the amount of taxes paid, was one of the characteristic features and one of the main problems of the electoral system that operated in towns of the second half of the 19th century.
 
 In practice, as a result of restrictions established by the law, a significant part of urban residents were deprived of the right to vote.
 
 As follows from the collected archival data, the persons who voted in the first and second categories showed the greatest activity as voters. At this, the turnout among the electors in the third category was extremely low.
 
 The central government, determining the procedure for the formation of self-governance bodies, was interested in ensuring a privileged position of the noble estate. Nevertheless, the analysis of city dumas composition based on the materials of the selected provinces shows that a significant part of councilors was made by representatives of the merchant class and petty bourgeoisie. The appearance of peasant class representatives in the city dumas is noteworthy.
 
 Thus, despite equality of estates in the municipal self-governance bodies created as a result of the reform of 1870, not all urban residents could vote. But even those who were granted the right to vote often did not use it. As a rule, the least activity was characteristic for the third category voters, which included the less affluent segments of the urban population and who did not see the point in participating in public life. Among the more affluent citizens who voted in the first and second categories, electoral activity was quite high. Merchants and rich representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie estate showed the greatest interest in the sphere of self-governance.

The Evolution of New Party Systems: Voter Learning and Electoral Systems

How do new party systems evolve over time? This article argues that party system evolution requires the solution of coordination problems that voters face in early elections; this happens through a learning mechanism. Elections reveal information to voters, who update their beliefs about party viability and the distribution of voters’ preferences and adjust their behaviour. The institutional setting, however, strongly conditions the pace of learning. Restrictive electoral systems (single-member district) accelerate learning through the harsh penalties they impose on miscoordination, while permissive ones (proportional representation) prolong it. Testing the argument on a district-level dataset in new democracies provides ample support; voters learn to cast fewer wasted votes over time and this happens faster in single-member district systems. The findings point to a trade-off between consolidation and representation; while party system evolution is facilitated by restrictive electoral systems, the presence of distinct social groups in the political arena is better served by permissive ones.

Voting Lines, Equal Treatment, and Early Voting Check-In Times in Florida

AbstractLines at the polls raise the cost of voting and can precipitate unequal treatment of voters. Research on voting lines is nonetheless hampered by a fundamental measurement problem: little is known about the distribution of time voters spend in line prior to casting ballots. We argue that early, in-person voter check-in times allow us identify individuals who waited in line to vote. Drawing on election administrative records from two General Elections in Florida—1,031,179 check-ins from 2012 and 1,846,845 from 2016—we find that minority voters incurred disproportionately long wait times in 2012 and that in-person voters who waited excessively in 2012 had a slightly lower probability—approximately one percent—of turning out to vote in 2016, ceteris paribus. These individuals also had slightly lower turnout probabilities in the 2014 Midterm Election, ceteris paribus. Our results draw attention to the ongoing importance of the administrative features of elections that influence the cost of voting and ultimately the extent to which voters are treated equally.

Pennsylvania in 2018: How Redistricting Does and Doesn’t Make a Difference

In this Field Note, we use precinct- and individual-level data on Pennsylvania to assess whether congressional redistricting influenced voter preferences in the 2018 midterm. Despite redistricting vastly altering the distribution of voters in House districts, this did little to change their preferences. Rather, redistricting contributed to Democratic House gains primarily by configuring a handful of districts to be more favorable to the Democratic Party. The evidence for minimal direct effects of redistricting on voter preferences, despite the presence of national political conditions breaking strongly in favor of Democrats, speaks to the increasing nationalization of American elections and with it, a concomitant decline in the incumbency advantage.

Geopolitical Inhomogeneities in the Registered Voters’ Distribution and Their Influence in the Voters’ Participation Ratio Distribution: The Mexican Case

Stylized facts appear in electoral processes worldwide, from Brazil to India. Here, we update a statistics carried on in Mexican elections but considering the inhomogeneities in electoral districts through the Nominal List (NL) (the list of valid electors in a given decision process) for the last three presidential elections. We find that the NL distribution at polling station detail is composed of, at least, three windows with a step function structure. Next, we study the consequences of the windows structure for the statistical properties of the processes. We obtain that the asymmetric vote distribution by polling station recovers a Gaussian shape for two of the windows; meanwhile, the standardized distribution of votes follows a distorted Gaussian, near to a skew normal. The distribution of the turnout at each polling station or voters’ participation ratio is close to a skew normal one in the bulk and failing at the wings. The average of voters increases in a linear way with the Nominal List and depends on the window considered. The results do not depend on the municipality, political district or urban versus nonurban distinction, and the electoral process considered.

Identifying Clicker Questions that Provoke Rich Discussions in Introductory Statistics

To identify clicker questions likely to provoke rich and engaging student discussions, we recorded the percentage of the class voting on each option on every clicker question used throughout each semester, encompassing nineteen sections of introductory statistics, taught by three instructors. Working from the hypothesis that seeing student votes broadly distributed across several different options is an indication of a good discussion question, we present the four questions with the most broadly distributed votes and discuss their use. Next, we present and consider the educational value of the questions with the lowest percentage of students voting correctly. We find that both broadly distributed votes and a low percentage of students voting correctly can be good indicators of effective discussion questions. Further, we find that questions devoid of numbers and based on general cases have fewer students voting correctly and have a significantly broader distribution of votes, thus indicating that this characteristic may be an important indicator of good discussion questions.

Empirical foundation of valence using Aldrich–McKelvey scaling

This paper uses data from the 2004 pre-election survey of the American National Election Study to test empirically different ways of incorporating a valence parameter into a Downsian utility function. We call particular attention to the problem of interpersonal incomparability of responses to the liberal-conservative scale, and use Aldrich–McKelvey’s pathbreaking method to obtain accurate distances between respondents and candidates, the key regressors. We find that the utility function the most supported by the empirical evidence, the intensity valence utility function, is the one which permits to make the better predictions for the 2004 presidential election. We also consider counterfactual analyses wherein we test if Bush, the candidate with the highest intensity valence, has dominant strategies which would have insured him to obtain a majority of the popular vote. According to the theory, it is known that the candidate with the highest intensity valence does not have such dominant strategies if the distribution of voters in the policy space is too heterogenous. Nevertheless, we show that the distribution of voters in 2004 is sufficiently homogenous for Bush to have dominant strategies.