A new approach to the empirical analysis of mass political consciousness
The article presents a look at the elections under the proportional system as a mass survey: inter-party debates form political cleavages which get reflected in the mass political consciousness and influence electoral cleavage structure. Factor analysis reveals three cleavages in the political space of post-Soviet Russia: socioeconomic, authoritarian-democratic and systemic. Their hierarchy changed in course of time. In 1995-2001, the socioeconomic cleavage was the first one, the systemic - the second, the authoritarian-democratic - the third. In 2016, the systemic became the first, the authoritarian-democratic - the second, the socioeconomic - the third. The strong correlation between political and electoral cleavages was detected in all Duma elections, except of the 1999-election. Also close links between electoral cleavages and social stratification factors (first of all the level of urbanization), as well as the distorting impact of so called ‘administrative resource’ on connection between political and electoral cleavages were found. It is noted that the authoritarian-democratic cleavage, which takes the second or third place in the political space, has been in strong correlation with the first electoral cleavage since 2003. This electoral cleavage (‘authorities vs public’) can be considered as the main characteristic of the mass political consciousness in today’s Russia and appears both at the federal and regional levels. On contrary, the socioeconomic cleavage makes itself felt mainly at the federal level. The systemic cleavage which dominates now in the political space influences election results only indirectly, actually it merges with the socioeconomic one.