The Zealot Voter Model


Abstract in English

Inspired by the spread of discontent as in the 2016 presidential election, we consider a voter model in which 0s are ordinary voters and 1s are zealots. Thinking of a social network, but desiring the simplicity of an infinite object that can have a nontrivial stationary distribution, space is represented by a tree. The dynamics are a variant of the biased voter: if $x$ has degree $d(x)$ then at rate $d(x)p_k$ the individual at $x$ consults $kge 1$ neighbors. If at least one neighbor is 1, they adopt state 1, otherwise they become 0. In addition at rate $p_0$ individuals with opinion 1 change to 0. As in the contact process on trees, we are interested in determining when the zealots survive and when they will survive locally.

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