Abstract
Inter-election vote swings for the AKP, the incumbent party inTurkey, during 2002, 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2011 elections are decomposed into parts attributable to economic conditions, strategic voting, cost of ruling, incumbency advantage, political realignment and other factors. For this purpose a vote equation, fitted to data covering twenty-seven National Assembly, Senate, and Provincial Council elections, held between 1950 and 2011 is used. The results show the pivotal role played by the economy on the political fortunes of incumbent parties.
Highlights
It is generally accepted that economic performance is critical to political fortunes of the incumbent parties
They behave this way mainly for two reasons: to check the power of the incumbent party and to avoid wasting their vote by voting for a party which is not likely to surpass the national threshold necessary to gain representation. In elections, such as midterm congressional elections in the U.S, European Parliamentary elections in European Union countries, and local administrations or parliamentary by elections in Turkey, supporters of the incumbent party get a chance to check the power of the central government, without toppling it
There are factors other than the economy, which influence the magnitude of the vote swing for the incumbent party, their effects largely offset each other
Summary
It is generally accepted that economic performance is critical to political fortunes of the incumbent parties. The party was formed in 2001, the year in which the country experienced its severest economic crisis in the last half a century and sixth decline in per capita real GDP in fourteen years It came to power the following year in an election, which ousted all. The model in question takes into account the main factors mentioned in the economic voting literature1 It considers the major political realignments that have taken place in Turkey. The latter is utilized to measure the effects of various variables on the changes in the AKP vote share from one election to another, during 2002–2011. These are relevant to the Turkish case and in the cases of other countries as well, since the behavior of Turkish voters is not that different from that of their brethren in other parts of the world
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