English

A two-player voting game in Euclidean space

Combinatorics 2025-11-11 v3 Optimization and Control

Abstract

Given a finite set SS of points in Rd\mathbb{R}^d, which we regard as the locations of voters on a dd-dimensional political `spectrum', two candidates (Alice and Bob) select one point in Rd\mathbb{R}^d each, in an attempt to get as many votes as possible. Alice goes first and Bob goes second, and then each voter simply votes for the candidate closer to them in terms of Euclidean distance. If a voter's distance from the two candidates is the same, they vote for nobody. We give a geometric characterization of the sets SS for which each candidate wins, assuming that Alice wins if they get an equal number of votes. We also show that, if not all the voters lie on a single line, then, whenever Alice has a winning strategy, there is a unique winning point for her. We also provide an algorithm which decides whether Alice has a winning point, and determines the location of that point, both in finite (in fact polynomial) time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.01713,
  title  = {A two-player voting game in Euclidean space},
  author = {Stelios Stylianou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.01713},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:43:52.996Z