Academic Discourse
Year : 2012, Volume : 1, Issue : 1
First page : ( 134) Last page : ( 142)
Print ISSN : 2278-3296.

Political Parties and their Geographical Extent of the Mass Base

Parmar Ramesh Singh

Associate Professor, Department of Geography, D A V College (Lahore), Ambala City

Online published on 18 June, 2014.

Abstract

The socio-cultural diversity in India has a specific geographical patterning, which explains the fragmented nature of India polity. The elections reveal that a high degree of political fragmentation is existing in India because of multiplicity of political parties and the dynamic allegiance of the masses to various political parties. So, winning of seats by a particular party does not necessarily shows its real strength. By keeping this context in view, an effort has been made in the present paper to answer the following questions: What are the major areas of support for various parties? Whether the supporting areas of different parties are concentrated in specific regions or evenly distributed throughout India? Both cartographic and statistical methods have been used to answer the above said questions. Among the cartographic methods, choropleth method has been used. Coefficient of variation is used to measure the eveness in the spread of party support,. The Z- Score of percentage has been used to find out the variations in support from constituency to constituency. The major benefit of using Z-Score values is that it eliminates the influence of mean over individual values. The spatial patterns of electoral support for the parties have been mapped and the nature and degree of its spatial concentration have been measured. The analysis is largely based on the results of the 1991 parliamentary elections conducted under the supervision of Election Commission of India.

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Keywords

Electoral Geographer, Cartographic, Election Commission, Political Parties, Political Fragmentation.

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