Cleavages Structure and Distortion of the Electoral Space

Abstract

The article presents the results of testing the hypothesis, according to which ballot stuffing in favor of the “party in power”, while causing minor distortions to the structure of electoral cleavages, does not fundamentally change it. The author tested the hypothesis on the data from the 2016 and 2021 elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation held via proportional system rules. He used the following method: in the regions where ballot stuffing was allegedly used in favor of the United Russia party, a certain number of votes were subtracted from the United Russia electoral results in accordance with the difference between the maximum and effective ranges of the electoral cleavage related to the confrontation between of the United Russia and the rest of elections’ participants. The author employed two models to run calculations: in the first model the threshold for deduction was a difference of 50% between the maximum and effective range, in the second model the difference was 5%. For 2016 elections, the first model took away more than 6.1 million votes from the United Russia, the second model subtracted more than 12.5 million votes; for 2021 elections — more than 5 and more than 10 million votes, respectively. Nevertheless, there was no radical change in the structure of electoral cleavages, let alone its elimination. The study showed that although ballot stuffing in favor of the “party in power” artificially overemphasizes the role of the authoritarian-democratic confrontation, sidelining other confrontations, the structure of electoral cleavages per se is largely preserved. Mathematical methods, especially factor analysis, can be efficiently used to detect this structure.