Nataša Dragović, assistant professor of mathematics at the University of St. Thomas College of Arts and Sciences, recently wrote an op-ed for the news blog of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) on how to win elections in a dynamically evolving electorate.
From the story:
Politicians use various strategies to garner voters and win elections. While polling tactics can help measure public opinion on different topics, that opinion may shift over time; as such, once-popular viewpoints may not accurately reflect the overall, present sentiment of the electorate. Building on our existing research, we explore a simplified mathematical model of this political process to reveal unexpected phenomena.
One of our most relevant findings pertains to mandatory versus non-mandatory voting. We found that if everyone is made to go out and vote, then a candidate’s optimal strategy involves remaining at the center of the political spectrum. This result aligns with a well-known theorem in political science known as the median voter theorem, which suggests that a majority-rule voting system will select the outcome that is most preferred by the median voter. But if voting is not mandatory, then candidates might benefit from taking an extreme position under certain conditions. The underlying mechanism of this conclusion is a saddle-node bifurcation.
