№ 6 - 2003
Van’kov V.A.
Residentiary Structure in Electoral Behaviour (With Materials of Parliamentary Elections in Russia Investigated)

The article presents an attempt to trace the main tendencies in the dynamics of Russian voters’ preferences and to propose a theoretical model describing them. The research has been carried out with materials investigated of the 1995 and 1999 elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation. The author takes as the basic characteristic percentage of urban population in a given electoral district’s residentiary structure. Coefficients of correlation are then found, between the said — factor — characteristic and the resultant one: percentage of votes cast for each particular party. Thereupon, the electoral trends are examined as the result of combined effect of the respective type of residentiary structure and of the “administrative resource”, as well as of the respective territories’ socio-economic development level. A number of conclusions of a substantial character are made, e.g. about extraordinary stability of the “left” and “right” electorates’ nuclei.