Modelling Surveys Effects in Political Competitions

In this paper we study the impact of news media and public surveys on the electoral campaigns for political competitions. We present an agent-based model that addresses the effective influence of surveys in orienting the opinions of voters before elections. The dynamics of electoral consensus is studied as a function of time by investigating different possible scenarios and the effect of periodic surveys, on the opinions of a small community of voters represented as a network of agents connected by realistic social relationships. Our simulations show the possibility to manage opinion consensus in electoral competitions.