Friendship can have varying influence. An interesting study now finds that it can lead to lopsided elections. This article by David Nutt is published by Cornell Chronicle. Here is an excerpt:

Have you ever thought about not voting because your preferred candidate’s victory seems assured? New Cornell research uses mathematical modeling to show that type of thinking can have the opposite effect, resulting in the election of politicians who do not represent the preferences of the electorate as a whole.

And most surprisingly, the culprit of that disproportionate outcome is not political malfeasance: it could be your network of friends, whose expectations about the likely winner can distort your sense of the election’s outcome and the value of your vote.

The group’s paper, “How a Minority Can Win: Unrepresentative Outcomes in a Simple Model of Voter Turnout,” published Nov. 22 in Physical Review E. The lead author is doctoral student Ekaterina Landgren.

Read the full article here.