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Electoral Geography

  • By: Benjamin Forest
  • In: Encyclopedia of Geography
  • Edited by: Barney Warf
  • Subject:General Geography, Earth & Environmental Science

Electoral geography is the study and analysis of the geographic patterns of elections, referenda, and legislative votes. The field originated in the early 20th century, particularly with the work of the French scholar André Siegfried, who produced some of the first maps showing the percentage of votes for parties by local region. Traditional electoral geography has focused on such spatial patterns of votes. Since the early 1970s, however, the field has also included other concerns such as the “neighborhood effect” and the spatial dynamics of political life.

Traditional Electoral Geography

Producing a map of election results is the most basic technique in electoral geography. These maps reveal the relative strength of support for candidates, parties, or referenda in different regions and are now often a prominent feature ...

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