The Impact of Presidential “May Decrees” on the Support of Regional Authorities

The paper is devoted to the study of the influence of economic factors on the support of the authorities in federal and regional elections in a regional context. As economic indicators, we consider the May Decrees of the President of 2012: this approach helps not only to identify the presence or absence of economic voting in elections in Russia, but also to answer the question of whether the policy of the federal center for centralizing the economic space is effective in the electoral sense - which is particularly relevant in light of the return of direct elections of governors in the regions after 2012. We study the dynamics of the socio-economic indicators of the May decrees for each year and, using a regression analysis, evaluate its impact on the percentage of votes in federal and regional elections for a party or candidate from power in each region from 2013 to 2019. The results of the study demonstrate that in the federal elections, the positive dynamics of economic indicators (mainly related to individual motivations) do have a positive effect on the support of the authorities and indicate the electoral effectiveness of the policy of economic centralization.