Dealing with correlated choices: how a spin-glass model can help political parties select their policies.
Starting from preferences on N proposed policies obtained via questionnaires from a sample of the electorate, an Ising spin-glass model in a field can be constructed from which a political party could find the subset of the proposed policies which would maximize its appeal, form a coherent choice in the eyes of the electorate, and have maximum overlap with the party's existing policies. We illustrate the application of the procedure by simulations of a spin glass in a random field on scale-free networks.
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
M A
MA
Moore
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4242, USA and Materials Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA and Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501.
Helmut G
HG
Katzgraber