ABSTRACT

Electoral geography is mostly concerned with the geographic distribution of voters and their attributes. We add a new argument to the discussion about electoral geography: that parties pursue geographically oriented stronghold strategies. Parties win electoral provinces, transform them into strongholds, and then use the stronghold´s resources to systematically target nearby provinces. We illustrate our argument with a quantitative analysis of the rise of the Turkish Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP), utilizing a spatial diffusion perspective. Our analysis shows that the AKP has electoral gains in a given ‘receiver’ province if they have performed well in other ‘sender’ provinces in previous elections. This relation is moderated by geographical distance: only past electoral success in nearby ‘sender’ provinces has an impact on the electoral fortune of the AKP in the ‘receiver’ province. Thus, our argument is that geography matters and it channels party strategies.

摘要

选举地理主要与选民的地理分布及其属性有关。我们在有关选举地理学的讨论中添加了新的论据：政党奉行以地理为导向的据点策略。双方赢得选举的省份，将其转化为据点，然后用邻近省份的stronghold's资源系统的目标。我们通过对土耳其Adalet veKalkınmaPartisi崛起的定量分析来说明我们的论点（AKP），利用空间扩散角度。我们的分析表明，如果AKP在先前的选举中在其他“发件人”省中表现良好，则可以在给定的“接收者”省中获得选举收益。这种关系受到地理距离的影响：只有附近“发件人”省过去的选举成功才对“接收者”省内AKP的选举命运产生影响。因此，我们的论点是地理很重要，它引导党派策略。