№ 2 - 2000
Ovchinnikov B.V.
Electoral Evolution: Multidimensional Electoral Space of the Regions and That of the Parties in 1995 and in 1999

After the results of the two parliamentary election campaigns have been analyzed in the initial part of his article, the author proceeds to: a) the modeling of multidimensional electoral space on the basis of the data characterizing similarity/diversity of Russian parties’ territorial support; b) examining the social base of parties (predomination of town-dwellers or of country-people); c) reconstructing the process of votes flowing over from one party to another during the period between the election campaigns. He comes to a number of quite unexpected conclusions. Thus, he maintains that there are no grounds now to talk of ideological propinquity of the electorates of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and of the «Unity» movement; furthermore, the electoral cleavage on the social level (town - countryside, the rich - the poor, the well-educated - the uneducated etc.) easily adapts itself, due to the absence of rigid ideological bounds, to the changes in the political sphere. Which makes it reasonable to forecast the long-term character of the said cleavage.