Strong triadic closure and Structural Balance in Politics
With the midterm race coming up, there is a clear divide between the country.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2018/forecast.
The following link shows the predicted outcomes of the election with the seats’ colors corresponding to the respective party’s. Scrolling down further on the page, you can see a map of the predictions, and as of now, the Democrats are predicted to win the elections. These predictions are updated as more polls come out, so this prediction could obviously change. However, as of now, there are clear dots of blue and red on the map. Moreover, they are generally grouped together. There is a cluster of either red, or either blue in any given area. Now, of course there are some independent party’s out there, but we don’t really see much of them, as they have not gained enough popularity or backing from others to be one of the key players. Additionally, most would rather back ones they see have a greater likelihood of winning, and therefore converge into two partys.
These phenomenon can also be explained with topics we learned in class such as the Structural Balance Property and the Strong Triadic Closure. The fact that we see groups of blue or red can be explained by the strong triadic closure property. This property depends on strong or weak links, so for that we first look at the structural balance property. The fact that we don’t see independent parties that often on the big stage is because most of the people converge into one of the two groups: Democrats and Republicans. These two groups are opposing. So no matter what triangle is formed, the structural balance property is always satisfied. Whether you pick 2 Democrats, and 1 Republican or 1 Republican and 2 Democrats (in both cases there would be one positive edge and two negative edges which is a stable relationship) [the enemy of my enemy is my friend]. Or all three of the same party, in which case all edges will be positive and be structurally balanced and stable as well. So we can see that if there were other groups and partys, which had their own varying relations with either group and essentially did not fit into the mold of the two sides, the structural balance property would not be met.
Now, based on this, we can see Strong Triadic Closure to explain why most groups congregate around the same colors. If there are two strong ties (same party lines) between two people, then they are most likely going to be friends with someone of the same party to keep the SBP consistent (as there are no “weak” links in this assumption) and most of the people one interacts with are the ones close to you (ie neighbors) there are the same colors next to each other. But of course, there could be another group, which would again from the 2 group model and still work so that is why it is okay to see other colors interspersed as well.
But in general, with this election, and US politics in general it is easy to see the topics of this class used and applied to explain the way the elections are laid out.