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 scalin g of the cluster growth. The spreading-of-damage technique is applied for t he spread of opinions. We study the time evolution of the damage and compar e it with the magnetization evolution. We also compare this model with the Ising model at low temperatures. It was recently shown that the distributio n of votes in Brazilian elections follows a power law behavior with exponen t 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 th e transient agrees with that obtained for elections.