Electoral geography

Electoral geography is the analysis of the methods, the behavior, and the results of elections in the context of geographic space and using geographical techniques. Specifically, it is an examination of the dual interaction in which geographical traits of a territory affect the political decisions, and the geographical structure of the election system affects electoral results. The purpose of the analysis is to identify and understand driving factors and the electoral characteristics of territories in a broad and integrative manner. Elections serve as the central political expression and exercise of power within democratic states, and conducting elections in democracies requires the translation of the political decisions of the distributed voting public into resulting “seat” representation of the various constituencies, except in the cases of Israel and the Netherlands which each have only a single constituency. It is philosophically accepted that in a democracy, each vote is equally valid amongst all other votes and thus each eligible voter casts only one equally valued vote. However, disproportionality and bias towards specific voting groups arise in the construction of artificial constituency boundaries in that political parties and policies are unevenly and inaccurately represented in the aggregate results amongst the electoral regions when compared to the popular vote.