The spatial character of Russia's new democracy

To date, virtually all research on Russian elections, beginning in 1991, ha ve used tools and methodological approaches akin to voting research from th e 1950s and 1960s. Researchers have relied either on public opinion polls t hat try to tease out correlations between a standard menu of socio-economic characteristics, attitudes about candidates, and self-reports of voting hi story; or on journalistic assessments of aggregate election returns, couple d with substantive expertise of Russian politics. Here, then, we try to gai n an understanding of those elections in more contemporary theoretical term s-in terms of the spatial analysis of elections and voting. Although our an alysis relies on a less-than-optimal source of data-election returns aggreg ated up to the level of individual rayons (countries)-we are able to draw a spatial map of those elections that is not too dissimilar from what others infer using less explicit methodologies. Specifically, we find that throug hout the 1991-1996 period, a single issue reform-has and continues to domin ate the electorate's responses to candidates and parties. On the other hand , we find little evidence of the emergence of "nationalism" as an issue, bu t conclude that to the extent we can detect this issue in the 1996 presiden tial contest, one candidate, General Alexander Lebed, did succeed in differ entiating himself from other nationalist candidates (most notably, Vladimir Zhirinovski) without abandoning the reformist camp. In general, then, this preliminary analysis suggests that the same tools used elsewhere to uncove r the spatial map of elections and the connection between basic and actiona ble issues (individual level thermometer score rankings of candidates and p arties) can be applied to Russia with the promise of coherent, understandab le results.