Will Trump win again in the 2020 election? An answer from a sociophysics model

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2021.125835Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Sociophysics model of opinion dynamics.

  • Predicting Trump victory at the US November 2020 presidential election.

  • Drastic impact of competing inflexibles in the dynamics.

  • Competing tie prejudices effect.

  • Analyzing of what went wrong in the prediction and what has been robust.

Abstract

This paper predicting Trump victory has been submitted before the election and revised after, allowing to add a Foreword and Note Added in Revision to discuss in details both the causes of the failure of the prediction and what has been robust in its making.

In 2016, Trump was unanimously seen as the loser in the November 8 election. In contrast, using a model of opinion dynamics I have been developing for a few decades within the framework of sociophysics, I predicted his victory against all odds. According to the model, the winning paradoxical martingale of 2016, has been Trump capability to activate frozen prejudices in many voters by provoking their real indignation. However, four year later, Trump “shocking” outings do not shock anymore, they became devitalized, losing their ability to generate major emotional reactions. Does this mean that this time around he will lose the 2020 election against Biden, as nearly all analysts, pundits and commentators still predict? No, because with frozen prejudices remaining frozen, the spontaneous prejudices will be activated but this time they will benefit to both Biden and Trump. The main ones are the fear of the other candidate policy and the personal stand facing a danger. In addition, Trump presidency having polarized a large part of American voters into narrow-minded anti-Trump and narrow-minded pro-Trump, those I denote in my model as inflexibles, will be driving the dynamics of choices. Both effects, prejudices and inflexibles can either compete or cooperate making their local combination within each state, decisive to determine the faith of the state election. As a result, tiny differences can make the outcome. Based on my rough estimates of associated proportions of inflexibles and prejudices, the model predicts Trump victory in the 2020 November election.

Section snippets

Foreword

Applying the Galam model of opinion dynamics to predict the outcome of the November 3, 2020 US presidential election, I concluded on Trump victory. While the paper was logically submitted prior to the election, it happened that the report by the referees came once the outcome of the election has been known: my prediction had failed. On this basis, I could have been tempted to withdraw the paper, no researcher being eager to have in print a wrong prediction.

Nevertheless, as clearly stated in the

Words of caution

It is of importance to emphasize that I am not dealing with a choice being wrong or right. I am not advocating for one candidate or the other. Within the field of sociophysics, I am focusing on identifying the hidden mechanisms, which drive the dynamics of opinion between two competing choices, in particular to anticipate the one, which will eventually ends up above 50% in case of a vote.

It is worth to remind that sociophysics is the use of concepts and techniques from Statistical Physics to

The Galam model of opinion dynamics

Two choices A and B are competing among agents like for a Presidential race (Clinton and Trump in 2016, Trump and Biden in 2020). I consider heterogeneous agents with three psychological traits, floaters, inflexibles and contrarians.

  • Floaters are agents having an opinion and advocating for it but they are susceptible to shift opinion if given convincing arguments

  • Inflexibles are agents (stubborn, committed) who never shift its opinion.

  • Contrarian are agents taking a contrary choice to the (local

The 2016 prediction

With respect to 2016 my claim is that Trump victory was neither an accident nor the result of some manipulations. It was the outcome of a non-linear dynamics, which obeys quantitative laws. And indeed, I could predict Trump victory using the Galam model of opinion dynamics [6], which could answer the following questions:

    (i)

    How comes Trump won while making repeated shocking statements, which infuriated millions of people?

    (ii)

    How comes Trump campaign, which went against all making sense

The 2020 prediction: setting

After four years with Trump president, people got used to his repeated shocking statements, which stopped generating indignation, turning the frozen prejudice effect obsolete for the 2020 campaign. Does that means Trump will be losing the election? The answer is no.

With no unfreezing mechanism, the naturally activated prejudices will determine the tie breaking. However, this time, the activated prejudices are activated at the benefit of both candidates. Main ones are fear of the other candidate

The 2020 prediction: winning strategies

What to conclude from above results, which allow envisioning novel disturbing strategies to win a major political vote, including the 2020, November 3, American presidential election? Contrary to what could be a priori expected, to win a voting majority is not to convince a maximum of floaters.

For each candidate, main instrumental keys appear to be twofold, focusing on both increasing the share of the naturally activated prejudices which are in tune with the candidate and producing the maximum

The 2020 prediction: the November winner

From above results the winner in the 2020 November election will be the candidate who will succeed in getting more dk>0 and x>0 in a series of swing states to reach the majority of Electors. However, in each state the various proportions of respective inflexibles (stubborn pro-Biden, stubborn pro-Trump), and leading prejudices (fear of Trump or Biden, reckless or cautious), are unknown. On this basis, I can only make rough estimates to determine winning or losing trends.

From my perception and

Conclusion

Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics, I was able to predict successfully the 2016 Trump victory, who had found a winning martingale, which could not be applied by Clinton. However, for the coming 2020 election, according to the same model, the instrumental winning quantities dk and x to ensure the victory, are this time available to both candidate. Biden and Trump can increase the stubbornness of their supporters and build up fear for the other candidate as well as promoting either being

Note added in revision

My prediction failed and as anticipated in the conclusion, it deserves an analysis to single out what went wrong in the making of the prediction. Two possibilities exist about a failure, either it is a significant failure with a massive blue wave as predicted by many polls or a light failure with Biden winning at the edge. The first case would require revisiting the basic elements of the model with some relevant ingredient being missed. On the contrary, the second case would be coherent with

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank late Dietrich Stauffer for our numerous lively and exciting discussions during several decades. He has been an outstanding physicist and a friend who has been always available to respond to my many comments with sound arguments and an amazing sense of humor. I am convinced he would have loved a paper with the author arguing that its wrong prediction was “almost right”. I miss him.

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