Document Type
Senior Thesis
Publication Date
Fall 2025
Abstract
The stability of electoral outcomes is a cornerstone of democratic legitimacy, yet real-world elections increasingly exhibit volatility driven by dynamic voter populations and shifting preferences. By treating elections as a function f(x) where x represents voter choice, we can study the conditioning of election outcome functions under perturbations, analogous to sensitivity analysis of numerical solvers. This paper investigates the mechanisms underlying instability in elections when voters and their beliefs evolve over time, focusing on the effects of conditioning decisions on anticipated future changes. By surveying classical and contemporary models of voting rules under dynamic settings, this paper demonstrates how seemingly stable aggregation mechanisms can lose robustness in the face of preference fluctuations, and analyze the strategic implications when voters or election designers incorporate information about forthcoming population changes into their choices. Through mathematical analysis and illustrative simulations, it is revealed that conditioning on future voter dynamics introduces new avenues for equilibrium selection, strategic manipulation, and unpredictability. Using data from current and historical datasets from the American National Election Survey, along with the most recent Cooperative Election Study dataset, we find that factors such as quality of campaigns and perceived fairness of elections are major factors in stabilizing or destabilizing elections. These findings highlight critical vulnerabilities and design principles for election systems in dynamic societies, offering both theoretical insights and practical considerations for sustaining stability in democratic processes.
Recommended Citation
Collier, Lorenzo, "Conditioning Elections: The Instability with Dynamic Voters" (2025). Political Science Student Papers and Posters. 12.
https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/polisci_student_work/12