Emergence, Evolution and Manipulation of Swing Voters in Presidential Election

TL;DR

This paper develops a two-dimensional opinion model to analyze how swing voters emerge and evolve under political polarization, revealing that intense antagonism strategies can backfire and influence election outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-dimensional opinion model incorporating antagonism effects, offering a detailed framework for understanding swing voter dynamics in polarized elections.

Findings

Extreme antagonism can backfire, alienating swing voters.

Polarization intensity influences which party wins.

Model validated on 2020 U.S. presidential election data.

Abstract

Political polarization, fueled by public discourse and echo chambers, threatens the foundation of democratic elections. However, traditional one-dimensional opinion models -- assuming ``support for one party equals opposition to another'' -- fail to capture the nuanced dynamics of swing voters (including neutrals, left leaners and right leaners), who are critical for the final election outcomes. This study introduces a two-dimensional opinion model that classifies voters into five groups, enabling precise characterization of the swing group's interactive behaviors. Importantly, we introduce antagonism effect to describe the intensities with which the two camps incite opposition and exert voting pressure in the run-up to the election, typically via Us-versus-Them framing. By integrating the open-mindedness of voters, the stubbornness of opinion interactions, and the antagonism effect manipulated by the two parties, we systematically explore the intricate interplay between top-down political campaigns and bottom-up interpersonal opinion dynamics, unveiling their nonlinear coupling impacts on the emergence, and evolution of swing voters. Counterintuitively, we find that extreme antagonism effects might backfire in presidential election: when both parties adopt intense antagonistic strategies, the party that polarizes more strongly risks alienating swing voters, thereby enabling its ostensibly weaker opponent to prevail. These insights are also validated on the core retweet networks during 2020 U.S. presidential election. Building upon multidimensional opinion model, our results highlight the possibility of manipulating swing voters and shaping electoral outcomes through antagonistic strategies of political parties. Our work also provides a nuanced and generalizable framework for analyzing opinion dynamics in other polarized public discourse.