Shifting Votes on Shifting Sands: Opposition Party Electoral Performance in Dominant Party Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

When competition is real but unfair, how do opposition parties make electoral inroads at the local level? I investigate patterns of opposition party support in the largest and most influential dominant party authoritarian regime—Russia—and focus on the most prominent opposition, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). Drawing on evidence from regimes around the world, I generate hypotheses regarding the electoral environments conducive to opposition success. Using county-level data, I test these hypotheses on the KPRF, whose electoral patterns have a low probability of conforming to my expectations. My findings highlight the electoral-geographic effects of party dominance.