Spatial Features of Electoral Conformism in Russia in the 2000s

Abstract

Introduction. The focus of the article is on identifying spatial patterns of the conformist voting results in the federal elections of Russia in the 2000s. The relevance is due to the fact that against the background of growing social tension in the country there is a territorial and meaningful localization of the protest. Therefore, the analysis of the election results acts as a mechanism for assessing socio-political and protest sentiments in the regions. Methods and materials. The methodological basis of the study was the sociological and rationalinstrumental approach, according to which voters vote based on their social affiliation and assessments of economic well-being. Analysis. The main research methods were statistical analysis methods. Through the use of Pearson’s correlation analysis method, the influence of factors on voting was revealed. Calculations of variation coefficients made it possible to analyze the dynamics of electoral behavior for stability in the regions. Based on calculations of average values of loyalty ratios, regions were grouped according to the specifics of electoral behavior. Results. It was revealed that there is a significant negative correlation between the share of the Russian population, the level of urbanization and the results of conformist voting. In the recent federal elections, the influence of these factors is weakening, which is associated with the process of nationalization of the party system of Russia. The grouping of regions according to the specifics of the voting demonstrated the presence of moderate electoral nonconformism in almost all subjects of Siberia and the Far East, which creates the prerequisites for fixing the “eastern belt” of protest sentiments. A similar specificity was revealed in two capitals, a number of regions with a low quality of life index in the central and northwestern part of Russia, the exclave Kaliningrad region, the economically depressed Kurgan region, as well as in the Volgograd and Kirov regions. The highest level of electoral conformism is recorded mainly in regions with a high degree of authoritarianism regimes. An analysis of the voting dynamics showed that in the regions in which large-scale protests took place in recent years, during the period before them, stable nonconformist sentiments in the elections formed.