Socio-demographic determinants of the support for Turkey’s Justice and Development Party

The main purpose of this study is to carry out descriptive and econometric analyses (at the province and district levels) to identify the urbanization–related determinants of the electoral success of the currently-ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). The AKP is not only the dominant party in the Turkish party system, and but it also is believed to have benefited the most from the existing living conditions of the urban population, especially in the metropolitan areas. Our ultimate goal is to produce empirical findings that provide foresight on future political outcomes under various assumptions regarding education levels, birth rates, and migration patterns.In the absence of individual level data from a comprehensive nationwide survey designed specifically for the purpose of examining the relationships in question, the best alternative is to work with official socio-demographic and election data available at the levels of the major administrative units in Turkey. The empirical work involves the estimation of econometric models where the AKP vote share appears as the dependent variable. The findings from the province level analysis reveal that the available indicators are reasonably good predictors of the dependent variable. It turns out that the urbanization rate is positively related with the AKP vote share. This finding is in line with the hypothesis that the AKP has benefited the most from the existing living conditions of the urban population, especially in the metropolitan areas. To be more specific, the party has been particularly successful in identifying the worldviews and addressing the needs of conservative and generally-underprivileged masses of voters many of whom are first or second generation migrants. The district level analysis also yields results that are in line with our expectations regarding the socio-economic and cultural factors behind the AKP’s success. The high level of support for the party in parts of the province where lower-class native and migrant populations are concentrated is among the key findings of the econometric work.