Quantum like modelling of the non-separability of voters' preferences in the U.S. political system

TL;DR

This paper models voters' non-separable preferences in the U.S. political system using quantum probability, revealing contextuality and hyperbolic interference effects that challenge classical decision theories.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum-like framework with hyper-complex Hilbert spaces to explain and analyze non-separable voter preferences and ticket splitting behavior.

Findings

Probabilistic violation of classical Kolmogorovian framework

Identification of hyperbolic interference in voter preferences

Successful state reconstruction using generalized Born rule

Abstract

Divided Government is nowadays a common feature of the U.S. political system. The voters can cast partisan ballots for two political powers the executive (Presidential elections) and the legislative (the Congress election). Some recent studies have shown that many voters tend to shape their preferences for the political parties by choosing different parties in these two election contests. This type of behavior referred to by Smith et al. (1999) as "ticket splitting" shows irrationality of behavior (such as preference reversal) from the perspective of traditional decision making theories (Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1953), Savage, (1954)). It has been shown by i.e. Zorn and Smith (2011) and also Khrennikova et al. (2014) that these types of "non-separable" preferences are context dependent and can be well accommodated in a quantum like framework. In this paper we use data from Smith et al. (1999) to show first of all probabilistic violation of classical (Kolmogorovian) framework. We proceed with the depiction of our observables (the Congress and the Presidential contexts) with the aid of the quantum probability formula that incorporates the "contextuality" of the decision making process through the interference term. Statistical data induces an interference term of large magnitude a so called hyperbolic interference. We perform with help of our transition probabilities a state reconstruction of the voters state vectors to test for the applicability of the generalized Born rule. This state can be mathematically represented in the generalized Hilbert space based on hyper-complex numbers.