Negative partisanship drives anti-frontrunner volatility in election dynamics
Abstract
Negative partisanship---where voter mobilization is driven primarily by aversion toward an opposing candidate rather than positive alignment---profoundly reshapes modern electoral dynamics. Here, we formulate a two-dimensional piecewise map to model campaign opinion dynamics, where voter abstention arises endogenously from a latent spectrum of voter activation barriers. We show that cross-candidate rejection sensitivity triggers a non-smooth collapse of abstention, dividing the phase space into an under-mobilized regime and a fully mobilized campaign regime. In symmetric elections with radicalized voter bases, spontaneous symmetry breaking via a pitchfork bifurcation gives rise to asymmetric polling attractors partitioned by mirror-symmetric basins of attraction, where early public perceptions---encoded in initial campaign conditions---act as a deterministic catalyst selecting candidate lead lock-in long before election day. For elevated cross-rejection, the symmetric equilibrium destabilizes via a period-doubling flip bifurcation, driving persistent anti-frontrunner polling swings. Rather than predicting static candidate hegemony, our model reveals that high negative partisanship turns elections into time-sensitive dynamical systems, where final election outcomes reflect discrete sampling snapshots of an oscillating campaign trajectory.
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BibTeX
@misc{fontanari2026negative,
title = {{Negative partisanship drives anti-frontrunner volatility in election dynamics}},
author = {José F. Fontanari},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.25210},
eprint = {2610.25210},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25210},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Negative partisanship drives anti-frontrunner volatility in election dynamics
AU - José F. Fontanari
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/18
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.25210
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25210
AB - Negative partisanship---where voter mobilization is driven primarily by aversion toward an opposing candidate rather than positive alignment---profoundly reshapes modern electoral dynamics. Here, we formulate a two-dimensional piecewise map to model campaign opinion dynamics, where voter abstention arises endogenously from a latent spectrum of voter activation barriers. We show that cross-candidate rejection sensitivity triggers a non-smooth collapse of abstention, dividing the phase space into an under-mobilized regime and a fully mobilized campaign regime. In symmetric elections with radicalized voter bases, spontaneous symmetry breaking via a pitchfork bifurcation gives rise to asymmetric polling attractors partitioned by mirror-symmetric basins of attraction, where early public perceptions---encoded in initial campaign conditions---act as a deterministic catalyst selecting candidate lead lock-in long before election day. For elevated cross-rejection, the symmetric equilibrium destabilizes via a period-doubling flip bifurcation, driving persistent anti-frontrunner polling swings. Rather than predicting static candidate hegemony, our model reveals that high negative partisanship turns elections into time-sensitive dynamical systems, where final election outcomes reflect discrete sampling snapshots of an oscillating campaign trajectory.
ER -