Past Seminars Seminários Já Decorridos 2009

Polls impact in the electoral process

By: Nuno Araújo
From: ETH Zuerich
At: Complexo Interdisciplinar, B1-01
[2009-11-25] 12:00

The process of opinion formation poses interesting challenges for both the political science and statistical physics. The identi cation of the main mechanisms within this process, as well as understanding their overall impact, brings more insight for the interpretation of the electoral results. In this seminar we introduce an agent based model to study the polls impact in plurality elections. Speci fically, we consider the influence of polls on the mechanism of tactical voting. We discuss the model in the context of mayor elections in Brazil, for di fferent number of candidates, and compare the polls impact in diff erent countries: United States, Canada, and Brazil.