RWG academic seminar

The seminar will be held online at Zoom platform on 28th of October at 19:00, everyone is welcome! In order to receive an invitation link, please, fill the google form for preliminary registration (if you have previously done it then it’s unnecessary to fill it again). The invitations will be sent the day before seminar scheduled date (27th of October).You may contact the seminar’s secretary Artem Demyanenko via e-mail avdemyanenko@edu.hse.ru for all organization questions.

Abstract

We argue neighbors play a crucial role in voting behavior for the main candidate in Russia. Moreover, the official status of the region and connectedness with the ruling party matter. The spatial effects from neighbors we explain with the idea that voters base on public choices (Coleman, 2018) and illustrate it on the example of Privolzhskiy federal district regions further developing the results electoral deference over time occurs in the form of geographic clusters (Moraski & Reisinger, 2010) with an emphasis on Tatarstan and its effect on voting on the municipal level. The Republic of Tatarstan is an exceptional case also because it is the only republic in Russia that has reference to sovereignty in its constitution and at the same time is loyal to the Kremlin. This paper presents a detailed spatial analysis of voters’ responses at the municipal level covering Russian presidential elections in 2018 year using the example of the Republic of Tatarstan and its surrounding regions. The preferred 2-step OLS specification with instruments shows that Tatarstan has a strong positive effect on neighboring regions in terms of voting for the main candidate, while surrounding regions vote differently and negatively affect each other. Municipalities with better economic conditions have a negative impact on the share of votes for the main candidate and positive for the opposite.