Uses physics to explain democratic elections

A physics-based analysis of U.S. elections finds that the electorate has become more polarized over time, leading to an unstable situation in which very small chages in opinion can lead to wide swings in electoral outcomes. Image: Christine Daniloff, MIT U.S. elections have become more "unstable," sometimes swinging in the opposite direction from the greater electorate's preferences. It may seem surprising, but theories and formulas derived from physics turn out to be useful tools for understanding the ways democratic elections work, including how these systems break down and how they could be improved. A new physics-based study finds that in the U.S., elections went through a transition in 1970, from a condition in which election results captured reasonably well the greater electorate's political preferences, to a period of increasing instability, in which very small changes in voter preferences led to significant swings toward more extreme political outcomes in both directions. The analysis also shows this instability can be associated with an unexpected situation in which outcomes swing in the opposite direction of how people's true preferences are shifting. That is, a small move in prevailing opinions toward the left can result in a more right-wing outcome, and vice versa - a situation the researchers refer to as "negative representation." The findings appear , in a paper by Alexander Siegenfeld, a doctoral student in physics at MIT, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, the president of the New England Complex Systems Institute.