Effects of Polarization on US Elections Outcomes

Abstract: Political polarization in Western democracies has accelerated in the last decade, with negative social consequences. Research across disciplines on antecedents, manifestations and societal impacts is hindered by social systems’ complexity: their constant flux impedes tracing causes of observed trends and prediction of consequences, hampering their mitigation. Social physics models exploit a characteristic of complex systems: what seems chaotic at one observation level may exhibit patterns at a higher level. Therefore, dynamic modeling of complex systems allows anticipation of possible events. We use this approach to explore 2024 US elections results. We consider the highly polarized Democrats and Republicans, and Independents fluctuating between them. We generate average group-stance scenarios in time and explore how polarization and depolarization might have affected 2024 voting outcomes. We find that reducing polarization might have advantaged the larger group (here, Democrats). The results inform on the perils of polarization trends, and on possibilities of changing course.

Keywords: political polarization; dynamic modeling; anticipatory scenarios; opinion dynamics; voting; statistical physics approaches for social dynamics