Dominant party and co-ethnic vote in Russia’s ethnic republics

ABSTRACT

This study provides the first empirical evidence of ethnic identity bias in the context of the dominant-party authoritarian electoral system in Russia’s multi-ethnic republics. I run vote-choice survey experiments in Tatarstan, Buryatia, and Sakha, in which the respondents choose between the dominant United Russia candidate and a system-opposition A Just Russia candidate. First, I find that the party vote in previous elections is the best predictor of the vote and candidate evaluation in the experiment, revealing the traction of party support in Russia’s electoral process. Second, titular voters demonstrate a strong preference for co-ethnic candidates regardless of the party they support. I rely on the arguments of social dominance theory to explain the prevalence of ethnic bias in voting among titular citizens of ethnic republics.

KEYWORDS:

• Voting behavior
• co-ethnic bias
• electoral authoritarianism
• dominant party
• Russia’s ethnic republics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2023.2254148

Notes

1. The author analyzed the official lists of current legislators and government officials in each republic published on the official sites (republic parliament; executive branch, including the ministries and the top bureaucracies; and district-level heads (glavy raionnoi administratsii). The ethnicity of a person is discerned from their first, middle, and last name, and their photo where applicable.

2. In Russia, primary elections are organized by parties, not by local administrations, and thus, usually, voters vote for candidates from the same party. A notable exception was the primary of the democratic opposition bloc held in St. Petersburg in May 2000, during which two parties – Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces – fielded candidates to determine who would represent the bloc in the gubernatorial elections.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation [ARC #0756122].