How about that "2005" presidential election?

Here is a paper just posted to the arXiv:

Paper: physics/0703095
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:45:47 GMT (178kb)

Title: From 2000 Bush-Gore to 2006 Italian elections: Voting at fifty-fifty and
the Contrarian Effect
Authors: Serge Galam
Categories: physics.soc-ph
Comments: 17 pages, 8 figures
Subj-class: Physics and Society
\\
A sociophysical model for opinion dynamics is shown to embody a series of
recent western hung national votes all set at the unexpected and very
improbable edge of a fifty-fifty score. It started with the Bush-Gore 2000
American presidential election, followed by the 2002 Stoiber-Schr\H{o}der, then
the 2005 Schr\H{o}der-Merkel German elections, and finally the 2006
Prodi-Berlusconi Italian elections. In each case, the country was facing
drastic choices, the running competing parties were advocating very different
programs and millions of voters were involved. Moreover, polls were given a
substantial margin for the predicted winner. While all these events were
perceived as accidental and isolated, our model suggests that indeed they are
deterministic and obey to one single universal phenomena associated to the
effect of contrarian behavior on the dynamics of opinion forming. The not hung
Bush-Kerry 2005 presidential election is shown to belong to the same universal
frame. To conclude, the existence of contrarians hints at the repetition of
hung elections in the near future.
\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0703095 , 178kb)


While I'm on the subject of recent arXiv papers, try this one on for size:

Paper: physics/0703091
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 06:40:20 GMT (59kb)

Title: Scientific inquiry in modern art
Authors: M.V. Simkin
Categories: physics.soc-ph
Subj-class: Physics and Society
\\
I report the results of the test, where the takers had to tell true
masterpieces of abstract art from the fakes, produced by myself. Every picture
can be described by the fraction of the test takers, who selected it as a
masterpiece. When judged by this metric, the pictures show no stratification
between masterpieces and fakes, suggesting that they are of about the same
quality.
\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0703091 , 59kb)