INTRAREGIONAL VARIABILITY AND PLACE-SPECIFIC ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR IN UKRAINE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17721/2413-7154/2018.80.4-17Keywords:
electoral geography of Ukraine, intraregional variability of voting patterns, place-as-context, region-as-context, regional differences in UkraineAbstract
The paper criticizes electoral geography studies of Ukraine, where the territory of the country is artificially divided into a number of regions following administrative divisions. The study reveals intraregional variability in the territorial patterns of voting behavior in Ukraine in 2002-2014. Zakarpattya, Chernivtsi, Sumy, Chernigiv, and Zhytomyr oblasts have the highest intraregional variance of electoral preferences for conventional “national-democratic” and “Communists and pro-Russian” political parties. All oblasts of Ukraine have internal variations of voting behavior. It was studied based on electoral results data for rayons and cities with special administrative status (n=675). Scatterplot with a time scale, filters for oblasts and rayons/cities, and the opportunity to draw electoral preferences trajectories from 2002 to 2014 parliamentary elections was used as a research instrument. The study also reveals region-specific voting patterns of cities and territorial outliers, which are bounded by administrative borders places with unique voting behavior. The paper accentuates place-specific and region-as-context understanding of electoral behavior as an essential conceptual framework for the further electoral geography studies of Ukraine.
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