Simultaneous elections in a polarized society make single-party sweeps more likely
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912348649816064 |
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| author | Dubey, Pradeep Sahi, Siddhartha |
| author_facet | Dubey, Pradeep Sahi, Siddhartha |
| contents | In a country with many elections, it may prove economically expedient to hold multiple elections simultaneously on a common polling date. We show that in a polarized society, in which each voter has a preferred party, an increase in the simultaneity of polling will increase the likelihood of a single-party sweep, namely, it will become more likely that a single party wins all the elections.
In fact we show that the sweep probability goes up for \emph{every} party. Thus the phenomenon we describe is independent of the ``coattail'' or ``down-ballot'' effect of a popular leader. It is a \emph{systemic} and \emph{persistent} macroscopic political change, effected by a combination of political polarization and simultaneity of polling.
Our result holds under fairly general conditions and is applicable to many common real-world electoral systems, including \emph{first-past-the-post} (most voters) and \emph{party list proportional representation} (most countries). In the course of our proof, we obtain a generalization of the well-known Harris correlation inequality. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_01663 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Simultaneous elections in a polarized society make single-party sweeps more likely Dubey, Pradeep Sahi, Siddhartha Probability Theoretical Economics 60C05 60E15 91B12 In a country with many elections, it may prove economically expedient to hold multiple elections simultaneously on a common polling date. We show that in a polarized society, in which each voter has a preferred party, an increase in the simultaneity of polling will increase the likelihood of a single-party sweep, namely, it will become more likely that a single party wins all the elections. In fact we show that the sweep probability goes up for \emph{every} party. Thus the phenomenon we describe is independent of the ``coattail'' or ``down-ballot'' effect of a popular leader. It is a \emph{systemic} and \emph{persistent} macroscopic political change, effected by a combination of political polarization and simultaneity of polling. Our result holds under fairly general conditions and is applicable to many common real-world electoral systems, including \emph{first-past-the-post} (most voters) and \emph{party list proportional representation} (most countries). In the course of our proof, we obtain a generalization of the well-known Harris correlation inequality. |
| title | Simultaneous elections in a polarized society make single-party sweeps more likely |
| topic | Probability Theoretical Economics 60C05 60E15 91B12 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.01663 |