Spatial Voting Analysis of Russian’s Electoral Choice

The study is concerned with electoral choice of Russian citizens in the elections for the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation during the period from 2003 to 2011. The aim of this research is to evaluate the effect of ideological demarcation of voters on the electoral choice within the spatial voting model. Research objectives: 1. To specify in the theoretical perspective the content and characteristics of electoral choice as a process and as a category of political science. 2. To reflect on and typologize the main theoretical approaches to the study of voters’ political behaviour and electoral choice. 3. To identify the optimal way to measure positions of political parties on a left-right continuum and propose a technique for measuring voters’ ideological preferences. 4. To calculate ideological distance between the positions of voters and parties within the spatial voting model. 5. To determine the role of voters’ remoteness from political parties as a factor influencing their electoral preferences and choices. 6. To identify essential and alternative projections of the Russian electorate perception of ideological distance. The research hypothesis which states that the distance between the position of the voters and ideological programs of political parties in the electoral space is a factor influencing the election result is rejected in favour of the alternative with the absence of such an effect. As one of the explanations the author verifies propensity of Russian voters to "distorted" perception of the ideological spectrum based on empirical data.