# Dynamical properties of the herding voter model with and without noise

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamical behavior of the herding voter model, revealing how collective leadership and noise influence consensus formation and phase transitions in opinion dynamics.

## Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of herding dynamics with and without noise, uncovering new phases and behaviors in the voter model.

## Key findings

- Herding leads to effective leadership within the population.
- Herding dynamics can either accelerate or hinder consensus.
- External noise causes the disappearance of consensus states and introduces new phases.

## Abstract

Collective leadership and herding may arise in standard models of opinion dynamics as an interplay of a strong separation of time scales within the population and its hierarchical organization. Using the voter model as a simple opinion formation model, we show that, in the herding phase, a group of agents become effectively the leaders of the dynamics while the rest of the population follow blindly their opinion. Interestingly, in some cases such herding dynamics accelerates the time to consensus, which then become size independent or, on the contrary, makes the consensus nearly impossible. These new behaviors have important consequences when an external noise is added to the system that makes consensus (absorbing) states to disappear. We analyze this new model which shows an interesting phase diagram, with a purely diffusive phase, a herding (or two-states) phase, and mixed phases where both behaviors are possible.