Spin glasses with attitude: Opinion formation in a partisan Erdős-Rényi world

Abstract

We explore the role of partisan influence in the emergence of consensus opinions in connected populations. Such scenarios arise in many modern settings-political interactions and online forums provide two instances-and there is a long-standing interest in modeling the dynamics of opinion evolution in such systems. By overlaying an external party-based bias on a spin glass inspired structure we show how party discipline tends to persist in the presence of independents, explore the role of neighborhood size in influencing dynamics, and exhibit conditions under which defections from party ranks are enabled.