<p><em>Answer inspired by Srikant Vadali's comments on this question: <strong><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63387/does-herd-behavior-influence-the-so-sites">Does herd behavior influence the SO sites?</a></strong> - please read question before reading further.</em></p>

<p>Can this be measured? I suppose the hypothesis is something like <strong>The rate at which up votes are given is directly(?) proportional to the number of up votes it already has.</strong></p>

<p>Similar corollary for down votes.</p>

<p>I'm not a statistician so this probably needs some refinement - please feel free to make the appropriate suggestions and changes.</p>

<p><strong>Update:</strong> I very much doubt it is a <strong>direct</strong> relationship because otherwise the number of votes would increase forever, but maybe some kind of predictable formula can emerge. (If you take number of edits (and hence visibility on active list) into consideration, it could become a complex, but very useful, formula.)</p>
