Mapping Election Polarization and Competitiveness using Election Results

TL;DR

This paper introduces a data-driven method to map election polarization and competitiveness using election results, validated across multiple countries, providing a new tool for analyzing electoral dynamics without relying on ideological surveys.

Contribution

It proposes an agnostic approach based solely on election data to measure polarization and competitiveness, applicable across diverse countries and regions.

Findings

Successfully distinguishes polarized and competitive elections.

Correlates election polarization with political polarization metrics in the U.S.

Applicable to countries with limited electoral survey data.

Abstract

The simplified hypothesis that an election is polarized as an explanation of recent electoral outcomes worldwide is centered on perceptions of voting patterns rather than ideological data from the electorate. While the literature focuses on measuring polarization using ideological-like data from electoral studies-which are limited to economically advantageous countries and are representative mostly to national scales-we argue that, in fact, voting patterns can lead to mapping effective proxies of citizen divisions on election day. This paper perspectives two complementary concepts, Election Polarization (EP) and Election Competitiveness (EC), as a means to understand voting patterns on Election Day. We present an agnostic approach that relies solely on election data and validate it using synthetic and real-world election data across 13 countries in the Eurozone, North America, Latin America, and New Zealand. Overall, we find that we can label and distinguish expectations of polarized and competitive elections in these countries, and we report that EP positively correlates with a metric of political polarization in the U.S., unlocking opportunities for studies of polarization at the regional level and for lower/middle-income countries where electoral studies are available, but surveys are limited.