According to a study from the University of Waterloo the more diverse your friendship group the more likely you are to engage in strategic voting, which can lead to better electoral outcomes for the entire population.
The study further found that the more closely we associate with friends and colleagues who share a similar ideology, the more likely our view of the world is reinforced. This well-known property of social networks is known as homophily (often called the echo chamber effect) and is perhaps what’s behind the adage that birds of a feather flock together.
The researchers discovered through mathematical simulation that the more homophily in a social network, one in which people are more likely to be friends if they share preferences or if people are friends they are more likely to have common preferences, the lower the extent and benefit of strategic voting.
“We found this interesting disconnect,” said Kate Larson, a professor with Waterloo’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science who, along with her recently graduated PhD student, Alan Tsang, explored the phenomenon of strategic voting through mathematical analysis and simulation.
“If the network had a high degree of homophily, we saw less strategization occurring and consequently ended up with worse outcomes for the entire population in the model. And if the network had less homophily, we saw more strategization but ended up with better outcomes.”
The study, which was presented at the 15th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems,explores the effects of information in the context of strategic voting by using a simple voting model known as “plurality voting”. Plurality voting is the system where you cast a vote for a candidate and the winner of the election is the person who receives the most votes.
“When an election is held we often employ a peculiar kind of logic,” said Larson.“As we mull over the candidates, we may have a top choice, but if we think our preferred candidate isn’t going to win we might vote for our second choice. Or maybe we cast a ballot for our second choice because we want to make sure that a frontrunner, who doesn’t represent our view, loses.”
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