Electoral Geography

Electoral geography is the systematic investigation of geographically disaggregated information about elections. Electoral geographers investigate distributions of election outcomes and the geographic implications of electoral systems in democratic societies to draw inferences about underlying patterns, causes, and impacts of geographic differences in voting behavior.

Electoral geography is closely associated with democracy. Over the course of the 20th century, democracy diffused rapidly throughout the world. Only a small minority of the world's population lived in independent democracies in 1900. The large majority lived under colonial rule or in autocratic societies where most people had little voice in government. Today, all developed countries and many less developed countries are democracies. Moreover, the 20th century saw continued extension of the right to vote. In 1900, only a few countries gave women the right to vote, and many also denied voting rights to racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. Today, universal adult suffrage is the norm in most democracies.

The diffusion of democracy between and within countries has enhanced the intellectual value of electoral geography. In contemporary democracies, elections are held at regular intervals. Voters face free, albeit sometimes constrained, choices among alternative candidates or proposals. Data representing the outcomes of elections are collected and published for geographically disaggregated spatial subnational units such as states, provinces, counties, cities, and local governments. These data are at least reasonably accurate representations of actual voters' preferences. They are in the public domain and can be mapped, and electoral maps can be analyzed statistically and cartographically. During recent years, the statistical and cartographic analysis of geographically disaggregated electoral data has been enhanced greatly by the development of geographic information science. Through analysis of electoral data, electoral geographers draw inferences about underlying economic, cultural, ethnic, social, and environmental factors influencing differences in election outcomes between places and between individual elections over the course of time.

There are two types of democracy: direct and representative. Under direct democracy, voters express their preferences on specific issues. For example, several European countries recently held referenda on whether to endorse the European Union's constitution, and several U.S. states held referenda on state constitutional amendments constraining or banning gay marriage. Analysis of spatial patterns of yes and no votes on such issues provides information about underlying cultural, economic, and political processes. Representative democracy involves choices between candidates for public executive or legislative offices. Voters elect candidates, who in turn bear direct responsibility for making decisions concerning public policy. Frequently such analysis involves geographic comparison in levels of support for competing political parties. Statistical and cartographic analysis is undertaken to identify economic, cultural, demographic, and other factors associated with observed differences in levels of support between parties or candidates.

The analysis of sequences of elections in representative democracies is often an especially fruitful line of inquiry. In many countries, elections have been held for many years, with data available for the same areal units in numerous elections. For example, elections for president of the United States have taken place since 1789, with reasonably accurate public records of popular votes available by state and county going back to the 1830s. Since 1860, the Democratic and Republican parties have been the two major political parties in the United States. The geographic pattern of support for the two major parties has shifted both between and within states. For example, between the 1860s and the 1940s, the South was dependably Democratic, with the Republicans winning popular vote majorities in only a handful of states in a few elections. The Democrats' dominance of the South meant that both parties ignored this region and took it for granted. Since the 1950s, however, the Republicans have become dominant in the South. Moreover, the South has now become a dominant region in determining electoral outcomes; no candidate has won the presidency without winning significant electoral vote support in the South since 1924. Meanwhile, parts of New England and the upper Midwest that were reliably Republican for many years are now dominated by the Democrats. Researchers have identified and interpreted analogous shifts in party preference at the state level throughout the country as well.

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