№ 4 - 2004
Kolosov V.A., Borodulina N.A.
Electoral Preferences in Cities and Large Towns of Russia: Types and Stability

Stability of town people’s electoral preferences as displayed at the 2003 Duma elections, is investigated in the article, and changes are retraced that took place this time as compared with previous campaigns. With data of 142 cities and large towns of the RF subjects analyzed, the authors come to the conclusion of relative independence of Russian large towns electorate’s behaviour on particular characteristics of respective regional political cultures, and of a widening gap between political preferences displayed by dwellers of the regions’ centres, and by the regions’ “peripheral population”. According to the authors’ account, there is to be observed ever more vivid polarization between the rural and the urban electorates: the former grows ever more left, the latter ever more right. However, the research as exposed in the article, also demonstrates that the towns of the “red belt” are growing ever closer, in their orientations, to rural remote places. A tendency is noted, too, toward polarization of political preferences within the urban population of Russia.