A two-player voting game in Euclidean space

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1. Verfasser: Stylianou, Stelios
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Stylianou, Stelios
author_facet Stylianou, Stelios
contents Given a finite set $S$ of points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, which we regard as the locations of voters on a $d$-dimensional political `spectrum', two candidates (Alice and Bob) select one point in $\mathbb{R}^d$ each, in an attempt to get as many votes as possible. Alice goes first and Bob goes second, and then each voter simply votes for the candidate closer to them in terms of Euclidean distance. If a voter's distance from the two candidates is the same, they vote for nobody. We give a geometric characterization of the sets $S$ for which each candidate wins, assuming that Alice wins if they get an equal number of votes. We also show that, if not all the voters lie on a single line, then, whenever Alice has a winning strategy, there is a unique winning point for her. We also provide an algorithm which decides whether Alice has a winning point, and determines the location of that point, both in finite (in fact polynomial) time.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_01713
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A two-player voting game in Euclidean space
Stylianou, Stelios
Combinatorics
Optimization and Control
Given a finite set $S$ of points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, which we regard as the locations of voters on a $d$-dimensional political `spectrum', two candidates (Alice and Bob) select one point in $\mathbb{R}^d$ each, in an attempt to get as many votes as possible. Alice goes first and Bob goes second, and then each voter simply votes for the candidate closer to them in terms of Euclidean distance. If a voter's distance from the two candidates is the same, they vote for nobody. We give a geometric characterization of the sets $S$ for which each candidate wins, assuming that Alice wins if they get an equal number of votes. We also show that, if not all the voters lie on a single line, then, whenever Alice has a winning strategy, there is a unique winning point for her. We also provide an algorithm which decides whether Alice has a winning point, and determines the location of that point, both in finite (in fact polynomial) time.
title A two-player voting game in Euclidean space
topic Combinatorics
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.01713