On quantum models for opinion and voting intention polls

Abstract

In this contribution, we construct a connection between two quantum voting models presented previously. We propose to try to determine the result of a vote from associated given opinion polls. We introduce a density operator relative to the family of all candidates to a particular election. From an hypothesis of proportionality between a family of coefficients which characterize the density matrix and the probabilities of vote for all the candidates, we propose a numerical method for the entire determination of the density operator. This approach is a direct consequence of the Perron-Frobenius theorem for irreductible positive matrices. We apply our algorithm to synthetic data and to operational results issued from the French presidential election of April 2012. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.