Majority Correctness in Social Networks: From Well-Mixed Electorates to Complex Networks

Abstract

We study majority correctness when voting is preceded by sustained social interaction on a social network. Motivated by the Condorcet Jury Theorem, we consider a binary choice with an objectively correct alternative, where uninformed voters revise their vote intentions through repeated interaction in the presence of competing committed leaders (zealots). In this zealot--contrarian voter model, voters may either imitate or oppose the views they encounter. For fully mixed electorates, we characterize the long-run distribution of votes and the correlation structure induced among voters, and we show that Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi networks exhibit the same majority-correctness behavior after an appropriate rescaling of leader influence. Building on these results, we establish a finite-electorate Condorcet-type guarantee: when post-deliberation individual correctness exceeds random choice, a strict majority is more likely to select the correct alternative than a randomly chosen voter. At the same time, we identify an aggregation failure: social interaction can reduce majority accuracy relative to a no-deliberation benchmark in which voters respond only to zealots. As the electorate size tends to infinity, this finite-electorate advantage disappears unless social updating is purely conformist, revealing a tipping point at full conformity: any persistent contrarian updating drives both individual and majority correctness to the random choice level of one half. Simulations on scale-free, ring, and small-world networks further show that topology matters because it shapes the vote correlations generated by social influence: hub-dominated structures generate stronger positive correlations and lower majority accuracy, whereas spatially structured networks generate weaker correlations, preserve a larger effective number of independent judgments, and improve majority accuracy.