Damage spreading, coarsening dynamics and distribution of political votes in Sznajd model on square lattice

In the Sznajd model of sociophysics on the square lattice, neighbors having the same opinion convince their neighbors of this opinion. We study scaling of the cluster growth. The spreading-of-damage technique is applied for the spread of opinions. We study the time evolution of the damage and compare it with the magnetization evolution. We also compare this model with the Ising model at low temperatures. It was recently shown that the distribution of votes in Brazilian elections follows a power law behavior with exponent similar or equal to -1.0. A model for elections based on the Sznajd model is proposed. The exponent obtained for the distribution of votes during the transient agrees with that obtained for elections.