Voting trends in other countries

[NOT gonna be banned soon]

In the United States, the Republicans control the South and the Plain states, while the Democrats control the North and the West Coast. Are there any voting patterns in other countries? I am curious to know.

[palandio]

The more interesting question would be whether there exists a country with real elections that does not show voting patterns. I doubt it.

Even more interesting is how these patterns can be explained. My following observations are certainly from a western-centric (though not American) point of view.

Much (not all, of course) of the United States voting patterns can be reduced to an urban-rural divide, with the cities voting more to the left. Similar patterns can be found in Germany, Northern Italy, Austria and the UK. In Poland the cities are more likely to vote for "culturally liberal" parties (at least, from a Polish perspective). But you also find examples for the exact contrary like in Southern Spain, where often the city centers are the most conservative and the rural communities are far to the left.

A part of the urban-rural divide is often in reality the presence of immigrant communities. This is particularly relevant in countries, where many of them got citizenship for being from a ex-colony like the UK and France. Most of the times, the big immigrant communities tend to vote for the left. On the other hand in Germany, the biggest bloc of "immigrants" is ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe who on average have a rightward tendency, but it's difficult to spot this on a map, because they are quite evenly distributed over the country. In France the pied-noirs, that is ethnic French from Algeria, are concentrated on the South Coast and they are on average very right-wing.

The next pattern is (post-)industry and class. The most strident example probable being the UK, where the most important party of the center-left is called Labour Party and has its main strongholds in the (post-)industrial areas of Northern England. Also the German SPD's biggest stronghold is the Ruhr area. Keep in mind that in most Western European countries the main center-left party was originally often a workers' party with a Marxist ideology. One recent development is that right-wing populist parties attract (white) working-class support. In Austria, the right-wing FPÖ is now the strongest party among blue-collar workers.

Then comes history and with this I would also include the religion-based patterns that occur in Germany, Switzerland and to a now blurring degree in the Netherlands. Massively simplifying, many countries at some point in the 19th century experienced a conflict between the state and the Catholic Church. Catholics often established catch-all religion-based parties. At roughly the same time class-based socialist parties were founded, and in Catholic regions they had much less room to grow than in many Protestant regions in the same country. Other history-based patterns can be spotted in Poland, where the parts that belonged to the German Empire in 1871-1918 are voting for the more "culturally liberal" parties, whereas the parts that belonged to the Russian and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire are voting for the more "culturally conservative" parties. In Romania the parts that belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, tend to vote for center-right parties, while the parts that belonged to the pre-1918 Kingdom of Romania, tend to vote for the the post-communist "Social Democrats".

There are of course many other patterns. One that I personally find particularly interesing, is the Northern Italian divide roughly at the river Po. The plain north of it is quite conservative and right-wing, the cities, towns and villages south of it often have uninterruptedly been governed by the communists and their successor parties since the end of WWII. Some people even go back to the middle ages when they try to explain this pattern (with pro-Emperor towns being more conservative and pro-Pope towns being more left-wing, of was it the other way round?). I have not yet found a convincing explanation.

[Crumpets]

Ukraine has a fairly straightforward east-west divide between pro-Russian and pro-European parties. It's a simplification of the country's politics for sure, but not too much so.



I made this map a while back of the relative strength of Russian political parties by region in the 2012 election. Obviously in the unadjusted map, United Russia crushes it everywhere, but you can see which area's tend to be at least slightly more sympathetic to the Communists, liberals, LDPR, etc. Generally, you see the communists have better showings in more industrial areas, while Putin and Zhironovsky did better in the rural countryside, but there are plenty of exceptions. Putin absolutely cleaned it up in the North Caucuses for pretty obvious reasons, for example.



Putin - United Russia
Zyuganov - Commies
Prokhorov - Independent (liberalism, to an extent)
Zhirinovsky - LDPR (crazy ultranationalism)
Mironov - A Just Russia (socialists, kind of)

[Tender Branson]

When compared with a US state, Austria could be compared with Kentucky on how it votes left vs. right (also this year in the Presidential race between Hofer and VdB, with Hofer being close to Trump's policies and VdB close to Hillary's or Sanders' policies). Like KY, which would probably vote for Trump over a Democrat by a double-digit margin, Austrians will probably elect Hofer as their next President too on May 22, with around 55% of the vote:

I've made a map too over the weekend, using the good old Microsoft "Paint":



Right-click for big version.

It shows how the Austrian districts voted using Right vs. Left.

Right: ÖVP+FPÖ+Team Stronach+NEOS+BZÖ+CPÖ+EU-Exit
Left: SPÖ+Greens+KPÖ+Pirate Party+SLP+The Change

Austria voted ca. 59% "Right" and 41% "Left" in the election.

Not much of a change compared with 2008.

The district of South-East Styria was the most "right-wing" with ca. 76%, while there were a few Vienna inner-city districts with ca. 59% for the Left.

I find it remarkable how the Right is ahead in most of the country, even in the "steel area" in Upper Styria that usually voted for the Left (also in 2008) and usually by big margins. I guess it's the first time ever that the Upper Styrian districts did not vote for the Left ...

Compare with Kentucky 2012:

[Hnv1]

In the United States, the Republicans control the South and the Plain states, while the Democrats control the North and the West Coast. Are there any voting patterns in other countries? I am curious to know.

Every country has a voting pattern, every society is divided by economic and sometimes ethnic lines and this the natural outcome of population within a geographical unit. Wealthy population concentrate in certain areas in contrast to poor population or different ethnic populations concentrated in different areas. (or add religious groups for that matter).

I think maybe Canada has the most volatile system where voting patterns change more often, but you can have voting based political system without voting patterns emerging.

So every country will have it's unique patterns. In Israel: Left voters usually come from the more affluent coastal plain or rural village with strong historic links to the left (and mainly European ethnicity), right wing votes come from less affluent areas and mainly the deprived cities north to south, with the Arab vote completely concentrated in Arab areas

[Asian Nazi]

South Korea probably has the greatest degree of regional polarization of any country I've studied. 

The conservatives have a strong base of support in the more developed and historically affluent Gyeongsang region (the Southeast).  Dictators Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan were from this region and favored it heavily in terms of development policy.  Today people from Gyeongsang tend to view the legacy of these regimes more favorably than anywhere else and it forms the bedrock of support for conservative successor parties, giving them over 2/3 of its vote and even up to 80% in some cities.  Likewise the more sparsely populated Gangwon province to the north tends to vote heavily conservative.

Meanwhile the smaller Honam region (in the Southwest) forms the base of support for liberal and left parties.  Historically this region has been underdeveloped and it served as a center of communist and non-communist resistance to postwar South Korean regimes.  Former President and long-time democracy activist Kim Dae-jung was from this region and maintains a good reputation there.  Since democratization, it has given nearly 90% of its vote to liberal successor parties.  Neighboring regions Chungcheong (to the north) and Jeju (the island to the south) are swingy.

But South Korean elections are decided in the vote-rich Capital Region, which contains nearly half the country's population.  The city of Seoul itself and the surrounding Gyeonggi province might lean a little bit to the liberal side on average, and the city of Incheon to the right, but this is the area where most seat changes occur.  The liberal Minjoo Party won the legislative election this year even as Honam defected to the insurgent People's Party almost entirely based on the seats they won here, with 82 of the 110 Minjoo constituency seats being won in the Capital Region.  Another pattern I noticed was that almost every single female member of the National Assembly to be elected from a constituency seat was from the Capital Region.  In fact, only 3 women were directly elected in the entire country outside the Capital Region, which should tell you something about the cultural differences.