HASBefore the results once again surprised by their clarity, the entire world held its breath on the occasion of the American elections. Pre-election polls had predicted, until the last minute, extremely close results between the winner Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, disturbed, no doubt, by the complexity of an old electoral system that does not help to get a correct idea of the situation. the balance of power. As for the dramaturgy, it was perfect: polls confirm, day after day, the concern and fever caused by this balance of results. However, studies show that these near-tie matches tend to recur with increasing frequency in modern democracies.
In a study published in April, physicists show that the explanation for this phenomenon could be found in the fact that the electoral thermometer seems to contribute to the fever it measures, insidiously influencing the electorate’s choices. “Great deal!” “, we would be tempted to say, since it seems obvious that bombings at the polls during the electoral period modify the process as a whole.
The originality of this work, which is completely abstracted from the contingencies of this or that election, is to show that the simple existence of reliable polls during electoral periods can cause the balance of power to change, as long as a small dose of hostility is maintained. . to the majority opinions exists in each of us.
The researchers considered a well-known model of social interactions inspired by the physics of magnetic systems, where the (binary) choice of a vote is influenced by two different “social forces.” Each person’s decision results from a competition between, on the one hand, the influence of those around us, which tends to modify our opinion to adopt that of the people we care about, and, on the other hand, that of more endogenous factors. , which can be our personal history, our readings, our sensitivity, and which in some way constitute an a priori opinion.
“Friendly neighborhoods”
This model has been widely used in the past and has proven capable of predicting certain trends observed in democratic societies. The authors added to this competition between free will and a form of herd instinct, a very slight tendency to think against general opinion, as long as it does not come from a single person, but from a measure of “objective” opinion. This certainly has a relative sociological value, but in the context of societies experiencing a certain democratic fatigue, this repulsive tropism shows, at least in appearance, a certain coherence.
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