Document Type
Article
Source Publication Title
Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems Series B
First Page
707
Last Page
738
Abstract
Third political parties are influential in shaping American politics. In this work we study the spread of a third party ideology in a voting population where we assume that party members/activists are more influential in recruiting new third party voters than non-member third party voters. The study uses an epidemiological metaphor to develop a theoretical model with nonlinear ordinary differential equations as applied to a case study, the Green Party. Considering long-term behavior, we identify three threshold parameters in our model that describe the different possible scenarios for the political party and its spread. We also apply the model to the study of the Green Party's growth using voting and registration data in six states and the District of Columbia to identify and explain trends over the past decade. Our system produces a backward bifurcation that helps identify conditions under which a sufficiently dedicated activist core can enable a third party to thrive, under conditions which would not normally allow it to arise. Our results explain the critical role activists play in sustaining grassroots movements under adverse conditions
Disciplines
Mathematics | Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Publication Date
5-1-2011
Language
English
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Kribs, Christopher; Romero, Daniel M.; Mubayi, Anuj; and Orbe, Clara, "An epidemiological approach to the spread of political third parties" (2011). Mathematics Faculty Publications. 13.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/math_facpubs/13
Comments
This research has been partially supported by grants from the National Security Agency, the National Science Foundation, the T Division of Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), the Sloan Foundation, and the Offi ce of the Provost of Arizona State University.