ELITE Fellowship Report - 2016

PREDICTING THE WIN OF A POLITICAL

PARTY USING GAME THEORY

ACHARYA NARENDRA DEV COLLEGE

(University of Delhi)
Govindpuri, Kalkaji,
New Delhi-110 019, INDIA

Submitted by:
Alok Kumar Balbeer Singh Kapil Thapaliyal Satish Kumar Patel
B.Sc. (H) Mathematics – V Semester
Acharya Narendra Dev College
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We are thankful to Dr. Savithri Singh, Principal, Acharya Narendra Dev

College (University of Delhi) for granting us summer fellowship under the ELITE
scheme (Education in a Lively and Innovative Training Environment). The ELITE
scheme has really helped us in realising our investigative acumen, generated from
classroom learning, in actual practice.
We are grateful to faculty member Dr. Chaman Singh for their constant
guidance, motivation and help with measurements.
Thanks to all college faculty, administration, accounts and laboratory staff
for cooperation in carrying out our experiments and measurement studies.
Last but not the least we owe a deep sense of gratitude to all friends,
colleagues and family for their good wishes and perseverance.

Alok Kumar Balbeer Singh

B.Sc. (H) Mathematics B.Sc. (H) Mathematics
V-Semester V- Semester
Acharya Narendra Dev College AcharyaNarendra Dev College

Kapil Thapaliyal Satis Kumar Patel

B.Sc. (H) Mathematics B.Sc. (H) Mathematics
V-Semester V- Semester
Acharya Narendra Dev College Acharya Narendra Dev College
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project work has been carried out by Mr. Alok Kumar, Mr.
Balbeer Singh, Mr. Kapil Thapaliyal and Mr. Satish Kumar Patel of B.Sc.(H)
Mathematics V-semester under aegis of ELITE project scheme of Acharya
Narendra Dev College (University of Delhi) during the period of June – July 2016.
It is further endorsed that the entire project and related measurements have been
carried out in the college.

Mentor

(Dr. Chaman Singh)

 PREDICTING THE WIN OF A POLITICAL PARTY USING
GAME THEORY

Introduction:
Game theory is the science of strategy. It attempts to determine
mathematically and logically the actions that players should take to secure the best
outcome this focuses how groups of people interact in social and economic
situations to achieve their own goals. One of its dominant branches is non-
cooperative game theory, which models the actions of agent/players maximizing
this utility in a defined procedure relying on a detailed description of the moves
and information available to each agent. The name "non-cooperative game theory"
could be a misleading, since it may suggest that the theory applies exclusively to
situations in which the interests of different agents conflicts. This is not the case,
although it is fair to say that the theory is most interesting in such a situation. In
order to achieve maximum capture value, decisions of the agents are independent
of each other. Thus players could cooperate any cooperation must be self
enforcing.
In this project, we would like to model the problem of predicting the win of
a political party according to our electoral system using game theory with the help
of some factors/parameters like the budget for publicity, manifesto and ideology
(ethical & non-ethical values) of the parties.
Some of the terms we are using in this article:
Player:
A player is an agent who makes decisions in a game. In our model the players are
the candidates and their decisions are the strategies for conveying the electors.

Perfect information:
A game has perfect information when at any point in time only one player makes a
move, and knows all the actions that have been made until the outcome appears.

Common knowledge:
A fact is common knowledge if all players know it, and know that they all know it,
and so on. The structure of the game is often assumed to be common knowledge
among the players.

Rationality:
A player is said to be rational if he seeks to play in a manner which maximizes his
own payoff. It is often assumed that the rationality of all players is common
knowledge.
Payoff:
Payoff is a number, also called utility that reflects the desirability of an outcome to
a candidate, for whatever reason. When the outcome is random, payoffs are usually
weighted with their probabilities. The expected payoff incorporates tends
candidate’s attitude towards interaction with electors.

Strategy:
In a game in strategic form, a strategy is one of the given possible actions of a
player. In an extensive game, a strategy is a complete plan of choices, one for each
decision point of the player. The different types of strategies commonly used in the
game theory are:

Dominating strategy:
A strategy dominates another strategy of a player if it always gives a better payoff
to that player, regardless of what the other players are doing. It weakly dominates
the other strategy if it is always at least as good.

Mixed strategy:
A mixed strategy is an active randomization, with given probabilities that
determine the player’s decision. As a special case, a mixed strategy can be the
deterministic choice of one of the given pure strategies.

Strategic form/ Normal Form:

A game in strategic form, also called normal form, is a compact representation of a
game in which players simultaneously choose their strategies. The resulting
payoffs are presented in a table with a cell for each strategy.

N-Person games in normal form:

The class of N-person nonzero-sum finite static games in normal form models a
decision making process similar in nature to that modeled by bi matrix games, but
this time with N(>2) interacting decision makers (players). Decisions are again
made independently and out of a finite set of alternatives for each player. Since
there exist more than two players, a matrix formulation on the plane is not possible
for the games, thus making the display of possible outcomes and visualization of
equilibrium strategies rather difficult. However, a precise formulation is still
possible, as it is provided below together with the notation to be used in describing
N-person finite static games in normal form.
Formulation of an N-person strategic game in normal form:
(1) There are N players to be denoted by P1, P2, . . . , PN. Let us further denote the
index set {1, 2, . . . N} by N.
(2) There is a finite number of alternatives for each player to choose from. Let m i
denote the number of alternatives available to p i , and further denote the index set
{1,2,..., mi }by Mi, with a typical element of M i designated as ni,,.MJ , and this so
for all jϵN ,then the loss incurred to p i is single number called pay of b denoted by
p(in general).
(4) Players make their decisions independently and each one unilaterally seeks the
minimum possible loss, of course by also taking into account the possible rational
choices of the others players.
In this game of predicting the win of the political party, we will consider two
parties namely A and B. Each party has only one member as its candidate in the
constituency.
The candidates are the players of this game, who want to maximize their
vote share (payoff) in the election. During any moment of the election the
candidates make their moves simultaneously & independent of each other.
The election is governed by election commission of India, like any other
game both the candidates are rational to each other and share a set of common
knowledge and entertained by instructions of election commission of India who are
contesting against each other in the parliamentary elections 2016-17 in a
constituency.
In an election each political party tries to cover entire range of problems. Every
party wants to lure the votes through various publicity sources. Here, we will
consider the two major publicity sources available to each party namely, print
media which includes hoarding, newspaper, pamphlets etc. and electronic media
which includes TV ads, Radio ads, social media etc.
In a given constituency there are millions of problems and expectations of
the voters. And so each party will provide a resolution to the problem or make the
promises to fulfill the expectations in their manifestoes. If we categorize these
resolutions, we will find that these are mainly divided in two sub models:

Model of Developmental and Fundamental Needs:

Besides it, the fact which really fluctuates in the mind of voters is the
ideology of the parties. The only factor that explains the mushrooming growth of
political parties in India is the difference in ideology. While some of them are pro-
liberalization, some are anti-capitalism. The ideological differences also exist in
the social sphere with some political factions swearing by Hindu nationalism and
the rest seem quite content with progressive westernization. It is this multiplicity of
ideologies and their practitioners that make Indian politics a difficult yet an
interesting case study.
It is obviously necessary to be acquainted with the publicity budget of the electoral
parties, as well as the levels of publicity, which may be handled by the various
media. Let us assume that the parties which makes most publicity attracts the
clientele of the public reached by the media and that in the case of an equal level of
publicity by both parties, the clientele is divided equally between both parties. If
Party A has a budget available of 30lakhs and Party B 20lakhs, we may write the
normal form of the problem as follows:
N = {A , B }
The set of strategies for Party A: The Party has to divide 30lakhs between the print
media and electronic media in multiple of 10lakhs, and that gives rise to four
possible allocations:

(0, 300000) recorded as (0, 3)

(100000, 200000) recorded as (1, 2)
(200000, 100000) recorded as (2, 1)
(300000, 0) recorded as (3, 0)

Similarly, Party B also uses same strategies.

Since the budget of the Party B is 20lakhs and it will also be distributed in multiple
of 10lakhs between print media and electronic media which gives three allocations:
(0, 200000) recorded as (0, 2)
(100000, 100000) recorded as (1, 1)
(200000, 0) recorded as (2, 0)
The corresponding utilities or payoffs of the associated game table are calculated
as follows:
Let us assume that the vote share between the parties by their budgets is in the ratio
of 40:60::a:b
Let f1 be the utility function to represent the vote share gained by Party A and is
defined as
 �a + b , when ai > a j and bi > b j for i is not equal to j
�
0 , when ai < a j and bi < b j for i is not equal to j
�
�
f1 = �a / 2 + b / 2, when ai = a j and bi = b j , for i is not equal to j
�
�a / 2, when ai = a j and bi < b j , for i is not equal to j
�
b / 2 , when ai < a j and bi = b j for i is not equal to j
�

The following tables represent the payoffs of the parties:

For: Party A
f1 (0,2) (1,1) (2,0)
(0,3) 70 40 40
(1,2) 80 70 40
(2,1) 60 80 70
(3,0) 60 60 80

Constraint,
70x1 +80x2+60x3+ 60x4+ x5>= 0,
40x1+70x2 +80x3+ 60x4+ x5>= 0,
40x1+40x2 +70x3+ 80x4+ x5>= 0,
Subject to x1+x2 +x3+ x4+ x5=1

We will solve this matrix problem using Simplex method of linear programming.
When we maximize x5 it comes out to be
x5=860/13;x1=0;x2=4/13;x3=2/13;x4=7/13;
which indicates that for the utility function f1 in this game table first strategy does
not matter. While fourth strategy gives higher weightage. Again we will use the
same utility function as well as the same ratio for the vote share between the
parties by their budgets (i.e., 60:40). So, we have the corresponding game table as
follows:

For : Party B
f2 (0,2) (1,1) (2,0)
(0,3) 30 60 60
(1,2) 20 30 60
(2,1) 40 20 30
(3,0) 40 40 20
Constraint,
30x1 +20x2+40x3+ 40x4+ x5>= 0,
60x1 +30x2+20x3+ 40x4+ x5>= 0,
60x1+60x2 +30x3+ 20x4+ x5>= 0,
Subject to, x1+x2 +x3+ x4+ x5= 1,
Again, we will solve this matrix problem using Simplex method of linear
programming. When we maximize x5 it comes out to be
x5=440/13;x1=0;x2=4/13;x3=2/13;x4=7/13;
which indicates that for the utility function f2 in this game table first strategy does
not matter .While fourth strategy gives higher weightage.
Table for manifesto
f1 (0,6) (2,4) (4,2) (6,0)
(0,6) 50 60 60 60
(2,4)) 40 50 50 40
(4,2) 40 40 500 40
(6,0) 40 40 40 50

Constraint ,
50x1 +60x2+60x3+ 60x4+ x5>= 0,
40x1 +50x2+50x3+ 40x4+ x5>= 0,
40x1+40x2 +50x3+ 40x4+ x5>= 0,
40x1+40x2 +40x3+ 50x4+ x5>= 0,
Subject to, x1+x2 +x3+ x4+ x5= 1

Again, we will solve this matrix problem using Simplex method of linear
programming .When we maximize x5 it comes out to be
x5=50;x1=0;x2=0;x3=0;x4=0
which indicates that for the utility function f 1 in this game table first strategy is
affecting no more.

f2 (0,6) (2,4) (4,2) (6,0)

(0,6) 50 40 40 40
(2,4)) 600 50 50 60
(4,2) 60 60 50 60
(6,0) 60 60 60 50

Constraint,
50x1 +40x2+40x3+ 40x4+ x5>= 0,
60x1 +50x2+50x3+ 60x4+ x5>= 0,
60x1+60x2 +50x3+ 60x4+ x5>= 0,
60x1+60x2 +60x3+ 50x4+ x5>= 0,
Subject to, x1+x2 +x3+ x4+ x5= 1
Again, we will solve this matrix problem using Simplex method of linear
programming. When we maximize x5 it comes out to be
x5=50;x1=0;x2=0;x3=0x4=0;
which indicates that for the utility function f2 in this game table any strategy is
affecting no more.
Table depicting the Ideology of the Parties:
Ethical Non-ethical
(Percentage of people) ( Percentage of people)
Party A 60 20
Party B 40 30

Results and Conclusion:

The above observations of predicting the win with the help of strategies indicate
that Party A has used its resources (i.e., the budget and information) in a better way
than Party B.
Although the manifesto of both the parties correspond to equal vote share, having
the larger publicity budget with its good use, satisfactory election promises and
better ideology of Party A brings it towards the chair of victory. The efforts of party
B were also quite well but not as of party A.
We saw a result that occurs with some frequency in strategic situation: power can
be bad thing for the possessor of it. Even though the chair is granted the power to
break a tie with his vote, in some circumstances that power can work against the
chair, perhaps dramatically.
Also, Game theory has a wide range for researches, and in our case study we have
used only 2-person game and further we can extend up to n – person game.
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