SKM 2023 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 19: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics II

SOE 19.2: Talk

Thursday, March 30, 2023, 17:00–17:15, ZEU 260

Fitting Polling Data with a Minimal Voter Model — •Philipp G. Meyer and Ralf Metzler — Institute for Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam-Golm, Germany

The numerous versions of the voter model have various applications in opinion dynamics. We consider a two-state voter model for approval rates measured by political polls. We find that three features are essential for a realistic model.

Firstly, adding zealots (that never change their state) on both sides, prevents consensus. This behavior corresponds to the observations in the polling of parties. Such a voter model can be regarded as a stochastic process in a confining potential. Secondly, the measurement uncertainty of the polls has to be taken into account. It can be modeled by additive noise. Finally, we identify short-time autocorrelations between the steps, which lead to a higher variance than expected from the naive model.

We use techniques developed for voter models along with methods from stochastic processes for fitting data from political polls to the adapted voter model.