![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
More than half of leaders who come to power through military coups hold elections to legitimate their regimes, yet there is extensive subnational variation in how citizens accept or reject this process. In this paper, we examine district-by-district voting patterns in Egyptian presidential elections a few months following the July 2013 military coup to identify the ecological correlates of three district-level measures of citizen engagement with the electoral process: voter turnout, valid (non-spoilt) ballots, and votes cast for the regime-affiliated candidate. Controlling for baseline measures of these outcomes from the free and fair presidential elections prior to the coup, we find support for the enduring effect of partisanship: districts with higher support for the deposed candidate in pre-coup elections featured systematically lower turnout and rates of valid voting in post-coup elections.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here
Notes
1. We note that feeling like a democratic ‘loser’ need not translate into support for military politics in general, but likely did so in a controlled contest where the military marketed itself as the only effective bulwark against Islamist rule. We return briefly to this implication in the conclusion. See, Holmes and Koehler (Citation2020).
2. See, Brooke and Nugent (Citation2020) and Barrie et al. (Citation2020) for more on this topic.
3. See also, Albrecht (Citation2005).
4. These numbers were reported by Wikithawra, an initiative run by the independent Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights.
5. See Hend El-Behary, ‘Ministry of Transportation provide free tickets to voters,’ Egypt Independent, 29 May 2014. https://www.egyptindependent.com/ministry-transportation-provide-free-tickets-voters/
6. See Mahmoud Salem, ‘Sisi’s camouflage campaign unravels in election’s final hours,’ al-Monitor, 28 May 2014. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2014/05/sisi-campaign-failure-turnout-egypt.html
7. See ‘Voter Turnout Low in Egypt Elections,’ al-Jazeera, 27 May 2014. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2014/5/27/voter-turnout-low-in-egypt-elections; Hend Kortam, ‘Fining of Abstainers is the Law and Will be Implemented: Mehleb,’ Daily News Egypt, 27 May 2014. https://dailynewsegypt.com/2014/05/27/fining-abstainers-law-will-implemented-mehleb/
8. Final report available online at h ttp://d emocracyinternational.c om/media/Egypt%20Presidential%20Election%20Observation%Report%20(ES)%20-%20for%20web.pdf.
9. See http://pres2012.elections.eg/ for results of 2012 presidential elections, and https://pres2014.elections.eg/presidential-elections-2014-results for results of the 2014 presidential elections.
10. In the appendix we report a series of tests designed to uncover fraud with inconsistent results. See also the work of Ketchley (Citation2021), who analysed the 2018 Egyptian elections using similar methods and found a series of irregularities in the data.
11. We choose these first round contests for this variable because the field of candidates was wide, which allows us to disaggregate preferences in a very specific way. Other races, for example, the second round contests, potentially aggregate preferences because they reduced the candidates on offer to two: Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq. Substituting Morsi’s voteshare in the second round, however, does not notably alter the results (see appendix).
12. See David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh, ‘Support From Islamists For Liberal Upends Race in Egypt,’ The New York Times, 28 April 2012. Available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/ world/middleeast/conservatives-in-Egypt-back-liberal-to-oppose-brotherhood.html; Khalil al-Anani, ‘Egypt’s Blessed Salafi Votes,’ Foreign Policy, 2 May 2012. Available online at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/02/egypts-blessed-salafi-votes/.
13. In the appendix, we provide both more narrow (Morsi’s 2012 first round voteshare) and broader (Morsi’s 2012 second round voteshare) conceptualizations of the independent variable. Neither substantially alters the results.
14. Descriptive statistics and correlation matrix for all variables available in the appendix.
15. Blaydes (Citation2006). Abadeer et al. (Citation2019) find that this pattern reverses in Egypt’s 2012 (democratic) presidential elections, where turnout was higher in more educated and urban districts.
16. The Global Terrorism Database is available at http://www.start.umd.edu/.
17. In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 elections analysts reported preliminary findings that subnational (governorate and district) patterns of turnout were broadly consistent with the 2012 contests. See Tarek Masoud’s tweet at https://twitter.com/masoudtarek/status/474930998677753856 and Mostafa ElHoshy’s tweet at https://twitter.com/melhoshy/status/475940447463170048.
18. Governorates are akin to American states, and each contain multiple subunits (qism or markaz), our units of analysis.
19. In the appendix we focus on another aspect of this argument, predicting the three post-coup outcomes not by reference to the disillusionment of democratic winners (i.e., Islamists), but rather the support of the democratic losers, measured by the district share of votes in the 2012 first round for Ahmed Shafiq, who explicitly campaigned on a promise of restoring the pre-2011 authoritarian regime. Across all three outcomes, this variable positively correlates with post-coup turnout, valid voting, and support for al-Sisi.