Social structuring of participation in the 2021 State Duma elections

Studies in Western and Central-Eastern Europe show that participation in parliamentary elections is structured according to demographic and sociostructural grounds — it clearly increases with age and with increasing socio-economic status, reflecting differences in the political competence of voters, motivation and opportunities for their mobilization. The paper discusses demographic and socio-structural inequalities of participation in the elections of the State Duma on September 17–19, 2021. To identify such inequalities, a logistic regression analysis of data from a representative Russian survey conducted under the ISSP program in 2022 was carried out. The results show that electoral participation in these elections was closely related to age — absentees prevailed among the younger voters, while the majority of the older ones participated in the voting. Such dependence, as we found earlier, arises as a result of a gradual increase in interest in politics and party identification with age, and may partly indicate clientelistic relations between the government and older people who received significant cash payments on the eve of the elections. In accordance with the theory of resources-motivation-mobilization, high education and income also contribute to electoral activity. It is related to employment, membership in trade unions, and attendance at religious services. In addition, the results support theoretical assumptions about the forced voting of the population dependent on the authorities — employees of the public sector of the economy, especially younger and middle-aged, do this much more often than those employed in private firms or not at all. However, it was not possible to detect differences between urban and rural populations, although it is believed that the latter is also easier for the authorities to influence. Regional comparisons add confidence that the highest official turnout rates in the republics of the North Caucasus, which, on the contrary, turn out to be the lowest according to the survey materials, appear as a result of massive fraud on the part of their leadership.

State Duma elections 2021, voting inequalities, demographic and sociostructural differences, International Social Survey Program (ISSP 2021), Russia