Modelling the Impact of Scandals: the case of the 2017 French Presidential Election
This addresses the impact of scandals on democratic processes for political scientists and policymakers, but it is incremental as it applies an existing agent-based simulation method to a specific election case.
The paper tackles the problem of modeling how scandals and media bashing affect election outcomes, specifically in the 2017 French Presidential Election, and finds that scandals can increase voter abstention by leaving voters without relevant candidates.
This paper proposes an agent-based simulation of a presidential election, inspired by the French 2017 presidential election. The simulation is based on data extracted from polls, media coverage, and Twitter. The main contribution is to consider the impact of scandals and media bashing on the result of the election. In particular, it is shown that scandals can lead to higher abstention at the election, as voters have no relevant candidate left to vote for. The simulation is implemented in Unity 3D and is available to play online.