Title: Searching for optimal positions through directional data in a political competition model

Authors: Mª Dolores López; Javier Rodrigo; Sagrario Lantarón

Addresses: Departamento de Matemática e Informática Aplicadas a la Ingeniería Civil de la E.T.S.I. Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain ' Departamento de Matemática Aplicada, E.T.S. de Ingeniería, Universidad Pontificia Comillas de Madrid, Spain ' Departamento de Matemática e Informática Aplicadas a la Ingeniería Civil de la E.T.S.I. Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

Abstract: This paper considers an application of directional data to political science. A model is presented in which the political preferences of the type of voters of a population are represented as points of the circumference unit with the political parties searching for optimal positions on this in order to gain the most support of that finite set of voter types. Strategies have been developed to search for optimal positions in the case of one party and Nash equilibrium positions are found in the game with two parties. The results reveal how the different parties redirect their stances to adapt to changing situations generated by economic or social circumstances affecting citizen preferences.

Keywords: political competition; game theory; Nash equilibrium; applications of OR techniques; geometric programming; exact algorithms; optimisation; OR models.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2018.10015371

International Journal of Operational Research, 2018 Vol.33 No.1, pp.127 - 138

Received: 09 Sep 2015
Accepted: 07 Nov 2015
Published online: 23 Aug 2018 *

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