Fundraising and vote distribution: A nonequilibrium statistical approach

Abstract

The number of votes correlates strongly with the money spent in a campaign, but the relation between the two is not straightforward. Among other factors, the output of a ballot depends on the number of candidates, voters, and available resources. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on Shannon entropy maximization and Superstatistics to establish a relation between the distributions of money spent by candidates and their votes. By establishing such a relation, we provide a tool to predict the outcome of a ballot and to alert for possible misconduct either in the report of fundraising and spending of campaigns or on vote counting. As an example, we consider real data from two proportional elections with more than 6000 candidates each, where a detailed data verification is virtually impossible, and show that the number of potential misconducting candidates to audit can be reduced to less than ten.