A Probabilistic Model for Detecting Gerrymandering in Partially-Contested Multiparty Elections

Classic methods for detecting gerrymandering fail in multiparty partially-contested elections, such as the Polish local election of 2014. A new method for detecting electoral bias, based on the assumption that voting is a stochastic process described by Polya’s urn model, is devised to overcome these difficulties. Since the partially-contested character of the election makes it difficult to estimate parameters of the urn model, an ad-hoc procedure for estimating those parameters in a manner untainted by potential gerrymandering is proposed.

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