Individual Preferences and the Growth Dynamics of Two Political Parties: Insights through a Simple Mathematical Model

Abstract

Formation and the change of individual preferences from one political party to the other has now become a common trend in most democratic countries. Many party members change their preferences over political parties due to the fact that most people are not much satisfied with the trends occurring in their party’s internal democratic principles and as a result change their respective parties. This project work developed and analyzed the use of non-linear mathematical model for the spread of two political parties, the ruling party and the opposition. We used principles borrowed from infectious diseases modeling to track the changes of the membership of each political party taking into consideration preferences. The whole population was assumed to be constant and homogeneously mixed. Steady states were analytically obtained and their stability nature discussed. Conditions for the existence of single parties and the existence of both parties were obtained. Numerical simulations were also performed to support the analytical results. This study has a potential to enrich political dynamics as nations embrace democratic principles.