Electoral geography is the analysis of the methods, the behavior, and the results of elections in the context of
geographic
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...
space and using geographical techniques. Specifically, it is an examination of the dual interaction in which geographical affect the political decisions, and the geographical structure of the election system affects electoral results. The purpose of the analysis is to identify and understand driving factors and the electoral characteristics of territories in a broad and integrative manner.
[ Agnew, John. 1996. “Mapping politics: how context counts in electoral geography”. In Political Geography, Volume 15, Issue 2, pp. 129-146. Elsevier: London, United Kingdom.]
Elections
Elections serve as the central political expression and exercise of power within democratic states,
[Jones, Martin, Jones, Rhys, and Woods, Michael. 2006. “Democracy, participation and citizenship”. In An Introduction to Political Geography: Space, Place and Politics, Second Edition, pp. 137-157. Routledge: New York.] and conducting elections in democracies requires the translation of the political decisions of the distributed voting public into resulting “seat” representation of the various constituencies, except in the cases of
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
and the
Netherlands
)
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which each have only a single constituency.
[ Johnston, Ron. 2002. “Manipulating maps and winning elections: measuring the impact of malapportionment and gerrymandering”. In Political Geography, Volume 21, pp. 1-31. Elsevier: Atlanta.] It is philosophically accepted that in a democracy, each vote is equally valid amongst all other votes and thus each eligible voter casts only one equally valued vote.
However, disproportionality and bias towards specific voting groups arise in the construction of artificial constituency boundaries in that political parties and policies are unevenly and inaccurately represented in the aggregate results amongst the electoral regions when compared to the popular vote.
Electoral constituencies
The territorial unit with boundary distinctions in representative elections is commonly termed the constituency, district, or precinct, and serves as both a region for the tabulation and study of the electoral result. These boundaries are defined in various methods, which are unique to each state, and can cause alterations or skewing of aggregate vote results and by extension the true decision of the electorate.
Election mechanics
Electoral geographers require the knowledge of the local and statewide laws and procedures for conducting elections, though it has been claimed that it is not within their purview to attempt to correct any observed flaws.
[Prescott, J.R.V. 1959. “The Function and Methods of Electoral Geography”. In Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Volume 49, Issue 3, pp. 296 – 304. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken.] The details of voting or the parameters of the election in various states or in constituencies within the state are critical factors, which affect the levels of participation and can characterize the outcome. The mechanics of an election are fully described through identifying the pattern of constituencies, franchise qualifications and changes, and the method of the election. The patterning of constituencies is related to the spatial orientation and drawing of boundaries as detailed previously. The franchise qualifications define the eligible voter bloc, the electorate, and thus determine the range of relevant, critical issues, which apply to those who vote in an election, and alterations in enfranchisement can greatly alter the nature of the electorate and the outcome of the election.
The methods of election are critical to analyzing the results, as it is impossible to adequately assess the proportionality of representation or validity of an electoral outcome without understanding how votes are cast and counted. For example, single-vote, winner take all systems can greatly disenfranchise minority voters as their selection is ultimately irrelevant in a two-party dominant system.
However, in systems which employ proportional voting or ranked voting techniques, the extreme minorities receive greater opportunity for representation.
Electoral distortion and bias
Regardless of the means by which boundaries are drawn, including by non-partisan or independent governmental associations, bias in electoral regions can always be observed. The United Kingdom serves as an example as the constituencies are established by a non-partisan commission and yet bias toward Labour has been observed in general elections since 1979.
Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering is a selective drawing of constituency boundaries in order to alter the results of an election.
The popular or numerical election results within a
constituency
An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger State (polity), state (a country, administrative region, ...
,
precinct, or
electoral district
An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity ...
can be distorted by the act of gerrymandering. Common alterations to election results caused by gerrymandering are:
* Splitting or dilution of the concentrations of votes for one party so as to make that party the minority in a large portion of the constituencies in conjunction
*Concentrating the votes of one party into a selected few constituencies such that many of their votes are ‘
wasted
Wasted may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
*'' Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk'', a 1997 memoir by Mark Judge
*'' Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia'', a 1998 autobiography by Marya Hornbacher
*'' Wasted: A Childhood Sto ...
’, while creating many constituencies with only slight majorities in favor of the other party
* Placing two or more
incumbent
The incumbent is the current holder of an official, office or position, usually in relation to an election. In an election for president, the incumbent is the person holding or acting in the office of president before the election, whether seek ...
s of one party within a single revised constituency, thus removing control of seats for that party
* Creating "winner takes all"
multi-member district
An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity ...
s with one party in the majority
Malapportionment
Malapportionment is unequal and disproportionate representation electoral systems with multiple constituencies. It is a violation of the democratic principle of “one person, one vote” in that constituency boundaries enclose populations of various size, which means that the votes of people in regions of lower population have greater representation per vote than those in regions with a higher population.
The effect of malapportionment is observed when equivalent percentages of the total vote results in different numbers of seats for each party due to one party having greater control in smaller constituencies and another in larger constituencies.
Geographic context
The spatial distribution and variation of the voting populace in conjunction with the demographic characteristics and delineation of voting regions provide a geographic context for the analysis of elections. Along with purely physical characteristics, distribution of economic resources, lines of communication, governmental and party platforms, and gender, ethnic, or class groups creates an interwoven fabric of people and opinion, which is accounted for in electoral analysis.
A population settles for various social, economic, and cultural reasons which create a defined contour of both population density and related political opinion.
However, this contour is not a static condition and changes in electoral results must be considered with respect to the change in the type of people and not just the change in their chosen politics. The distribution of politics has been attributed to various factors, one of which is described as a convergence of external stimuli.
These stimuli can come in the form of state-supplied information, local cultural norms, religious affiliations, economic opportunity, and media presentation of issues. The degree of effect for each particular stimulus is then a result of the susceptibility of a particular geography. For example, policy dealing with the governmental treatment of an urban population would have greater importance to those in a territory with an urban densities and a far smaller importance in a sparser region.
[Morrill, Richard, Knopp, Larry and Brown, Michael. 2007. “Anomalies in red and blue: Exceptionalism in American electoral geography”. In Political Geography, Volume 26, pp. 525-553. Elsevier: Atlanta.] A state or its political organizations has some power to affect these stimuli and are therefore considered as a contributing factor in the changes of election outcomes.
Physical contour
Electoral geography considers the way in which the
physical
Physical may refer to:
*Physical examination
In a physical examination, medical examination, or clinical examination, a medical practitioner examines a patient for any possible medical signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It generally co ...
characteristics of a territory directly affect the population and thus the election decision of these people.
The geographic location and associated natural factors are directly related to the potential in a specific region for political development
and have an additional relationship with the electoral processes and policy decisions of the region.
The study of electoral results has been shown to identify the regions of specific politics and the relative cohesion amongst these similar regions.
Regions which share large numbers of physical or demographic characteristics, or both as these two factors are related,
will demonstrate significant similarities in voting participation and patterns of outcome.
Economics, communications, and infrastructure
The economic development within a given region is also related to the development of its politics and the issues which are important to the electorate. A state with disproportionate economic development will necessarily come under pressure from the poorer constituencies to take action to redistribute wealth and level the economic prosperity, which will be observable in the electoral results.
The range and availability of communication and issue awareness can affect perception of issues and skew rational decision making. If a populace is generally unaware of the implications of policy decisions they are less able to make informed decisions and are more readily manipulated by candidate or party claims and marketing techniques, which can make analysis difficult as no predictable rationale may exist for voting outcomes.
Culture, demographics, and political parties
Background information detailing the established political parties, issues being contested in an election, and the mechanics of the election process also help to contextualize and understanding contributing factors in each individual election. Over time these factors may be changed as parties are formed or disbanded and policy issues are brought to vote or become obsolete, which can explain the shifting appearance of the electoral result over a period of time. The governmental and party platforms serve as categories into which voters are forced to classify themselves
even though it is likely that no one party platform accurately captures the entirety of the opinions held by a voter.
This makes consideration of the party platform or recent party activities critical in understanding the changes or stability of electoral results over space and time. Gender, ethnic, and class disparity can cause voting that is related to shared background qualities and experience as opposed to political opinions.
This means that candidates from a particular area or common ethnicity can receive votes from the citizens of that area irrespective of their party affiliations or national because of their shared experience and mutual acquaintance. This has been referred to as the “friends and neighbors effect”.
Determinism
There is a distinction amongst geographers between considering the effect of geography to be fully deterministic and merely having only a partial effect amongst other effects. Deterministic electoral geography would result in predictable results regardless of candidate or proposed policy as the sum of physical geographic traits would entirely control voting decisions. This interpretation has been widely rejected by geographers.
Instead, it is more fully accepted that geography plays some role in conjunction with other cultural and interpersonal effects. The “neighborhood effect” is an observed altering of electoral results due to the tendency of people who are spatially close to vote similarly because of daily interactions.
Arguments against determinism also rely on observed anomalies in voting results. An example arises in comparing results of presidential elections in the United States to the expectation of favoring Democratic or Republican candidates in urban or rural locations respectively or the expectations for preference on the county scale based on racial composition with minority groups favoring the Democratic party.
The results indicate that anomalies occur in distinct voting areas where the Republican or Democratic candidate won counties that had opposite characteristics of their traditionally carried counties. These anomalies are attributed to the historical, economic, and cultural geographies which serve to override the territory traits that were used to predict the electoral results.
In this way voters are motivated by factors outside their geography to vote in a way that is unexpected and often even contrary to their individual interests.
Electoral mapping
The spatial variations of support for particular policies are routinely mapped in order to pictorially represent the electoral geography of a territory, which can allow for the recognition of patterns of location.
Ron Johnston
considers the entire process and outcome of the election through the examining lens of territory maps. He claims that electoral results are the outcome of superimposing the map of cultural, economic, religious, and demographic characteristics with the determined map of electoral districts and applying the issues on the ballot. The selection of mapping paradigms using color, patterning, brightness or darkness effects is employed in order to visually detail aspects and characteristics of interest in elections, such as voter participation, intensity of support, population density, and constituency boundaries which may not easily be noticed by considering words and numbers.
An example of a mapping paradigm is observed in United States elections in recent history, wherein results in favor of Democratic candidates are marked by coloring the constituency blue and using red for results in favor of Republican candidates.
This has been used to a wide degree and is thus readily acknowledged by United States citizens in the media and academic display of election results. However, the variations in electoral results over a territory or place cannot be directly equated to the land areas represented by mapping as the voting populace is the subject of interest and study in electoral geography and not the particular territory they live on during a given election. Human movement is an ongoing progress, which consistently redefines the distributions of policy preference and thus the associated election decisions.
Thus the passage of time must be incorporated in electoral analysis through the duality of Electoral geography also deals with the alterations of election results in a given place over an extended time interval encompassing many elections. This effect can be mapped using various techniques which help to show changing opinions and changing populations in the constituencies of the state over a time interval.
Electoral geography relies upon detailed and accurate mapping techniques with appropriate contextualization and background knowledge in order to successfully visualize and analyze the results of an election.
World electoral geographies
Canada
Canadian electoral geography is typified by a high degree of
political regionalism, with most disputes interpreted as conflicts between provinces or regions. Notably,
class consciousness
In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to ...
is quite low in Canada as compared to the former mother country, Britain.
Because of the disparity in the population size of the various provinces, their importance in electoral geography varies substantially. As well some provinces are small enough and similar enough to their neighbours that they vote similarly, while others are large enough to have considerable internal divisions. The smaller
Atlantic Provinces
Atlantic Canada, also called the Atlantic provinces (french: provinces de l'Atlantique), is the region of Eastern Canada comprising the provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec. The four provinces are New Brunswick, Newfoundlan ...
might be considered as unit, but Ontario might be subdivided between the urban, suburban, rural, and remote regions, or between
north
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
,
south
South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
,
east
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
, and
west
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
, or into more specific regions like the
Golden Horseshoe
The Golden Horseshoe is a secondary region of Southern Ontario, Canada, which lies at the western end of Lake Ontario, with outer boundaries stretching south to Lake Erie and north to Lake Scugog, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The ...
or the
Greater Toronto Area
The Greater Toronto Area, commonly referred to as the GTA, includes the City of Toronto and the regional municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. In total, the region contains 25 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The Greater T ...
.
In federal politics, a winning coalition must be composed of various sub-regions, identified not only by place but by ideology. A winning coalition might include Western social conservatives, suburban Ontario moderates, and Quebec soft nationalists (Brian Mulroney,
1984
Events
January
* January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
* January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast A ...
,
1988
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...
), or Ontario moderates, Quebec federalists, and most of Atlantic Canada (Jean Chretien,
1993,
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...
,
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...
), or most of the West and Atlantic Canada, plus rural and suburban Ontario (Stephen Harper,
2011
File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...
).
When the main parties are not seen to serve the interest of a particular region, protest parties or movements often emerge. This has included several
Quebec nationalist
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirteen p ...
parties, parties arising from the phenomenon called
Western alienation
In Canadian politics, Western alienation is the notion that the Western provinces – British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba – have been alienated, and in some cases excluded, from mainstream Canadian political affairs in fav ...
, and the
Maritime Rights Movement The Maritime Rights Movement arose in the 1920s in response to perceived unfair economic policies in Canada that were affecting the economies of the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. At a time of rural protest in Can ...
. Partly for this reason, Canada has typically had a
multi-party system
In political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coal ...
for much of its history rather than the
two-party system
A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referre ...
that is typical of
first past the post
In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...
elections. This has in turn led to several
minority governments in Canada
In Canada's parliamentary system of responsible government, minority governments occur when no party has a majority of seats in the legislature. Typically, but not necessarily, the party with a plurality of seats forms the government. In a minorit ...
.
Regionalism in Canada is such that is also notable ''within'' provinces on the stage of provincial elections. There is considerable distinction between the
politics of Montreal
The politics of Montreal begins with residents of Montreal electing representatives to the municipal, provincial, and federal levels of government.
The Island of Montreal which consists of the City of Montreal and 16 independent municipalitie ...
and those of
the Saguenay or
the Gaspe, and likewise between the
Lower Mainland
The Lower Mainland is a geographic and cultural region of the mainland coast of British Columbia that generally comprises the regional districts of Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley. Home to approximately 3.05million people as of the 2021 Canadia ...
and the
BC Interior
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, nickname = "The Interior"
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, subdivi ...
.
United Kingdom
In the present
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, electoral geography is studied extensively and has been compared to the method in the United States of elections and regionalization, by employing UK methods of
class cleavage, where the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
tends to be favoured by the white-collar class and the
Labour Party by the UK’s working class.
[Johnston, Ron. 2005. “Anglo-American Electoral Geography: Same Roots and Same Goals, but Different Means to Ends?”. In Professional Geographer, pp. 580–587. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.] Comparing the methods of sectionalism in the UK and the US places emphasis on location; instead of basing support for a party by class, the US does so by location. In the UK, some areas are more heavily populated than others, giving differences in population relating to the geography of each individual voting district.
In the UK, to extinguish regional identity,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
was divided into nine regions. It was thought
that people who congregate seem to vote alike, rather than voting on one’s own opinions. This is what is known as the "neighborhood effect".
Even with nine distinct regions, the voting patterns are seemingly disproportionally divided between the two dominant parties. This forces researchers to question what causes regional differences in voting outcomes.
The voting method in the UK differs from that of the United States. To produce an outcome, "all voting takes place in the context of a particular electoral system. There has to be some agreed way of aggregating votes to produce a result. Votes indicate individuals’ preferences and in the public elections these have to be translated into seats by some formula".
This formulaic approach ends in an outcome giving a translated number of seats for each party in Parliament.
England is not alone in selecting its electoral system. “… A cross-national study found seventy different systems in twenty-seven democracies.” When choosing which system a government will use, great consideration has to be made. A serious question arises during this process; What should this election be designed to achieve? General answers have been:
* To enable the representation of voters’ opinion in rough proportion to their strength in the electorate
* To allow for the representation of geographically defined areas
* To decisively confer power on a team of leaders or a party.”
Voter awareness in terms of the reasoning, motivation, and methods of an election are critical for shoring up public support for the legitimacy of elections and elected officials.
Russia
The electoral geography of Russia is marked by the obvious territorial cleavages between North and South, urban and rural territories, etc. One phenomenon of territorial cleavages in electoral preferences in Russia is known as the "red belt" (compact located regions with high support for the Communist Party).
In the first democratic elections in the history of contemporary Russia it was noticed that liberal and democratic politicians had much higher support in the northern regions, whereas the south of Russia appeared more conservative.
Both capitals in Russia - Moscow and the "northern capital" Saint Petersburg - significantly differ in electoral results from the rest of the country. Only in these cities is there strong electoral support of liberal and democratic politicians. Support for United Russia is lower than in other regions.
United States
The electoral geography of the United States is a description of regional political differences, which in recent years has been popularized by the red and blue paradigm to pictorially represent Republican and Democratic Election results. The presence of a two-dominant party system creates a great potential for disenfranchisement of minority voters and their opinions. Qualities of “northeasterliness”, “westerliness”, and “southerliness”, which constitute the expectations for Democratic, Republican, and volatile Republican voting results, have been used in order to understand and define the political landscape.
However, culturally driven anomalies in this general expectation have been observed.
Debate has been common in recent elections in regards to the election of the President of the United States via the electoral college. The debate stems from the fact that the electoral college is a malapportioned body., and thus provides for a scenario whereby a candidate may win the election via the electoral college without carry a plurality of the popular vote.
[Electoral College Mischief, The Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2004". Opinionjournal.com. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005582. Retrieved 2010-08-26.]
See also
*
Electoral geography of Russia
References
External links
Electoral Geography.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Electoral Geography
Elections