Electoral geography
Topic: Human Geography: Nature, Scope and Approaches · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Human Geography: Nature and Scope"
Meaning
Electoral geography is a sub-field of political geography. Its sister discipline is psephology, the study of elections and voting. It studies how voting patterns differ across space. It also studies delimitation, which means drawing constituency boundaries. A classic topic is gerrymandering, which means drawing boundaries to help one party win. The word comes from Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, USA, in 1812.
Example
In India, the Delimitation Commission redraws Lok Sabha and Assembly constituency boundaries. An electoral geographer might map results for each constituency in Kerala, on the south-west coast. The map would show which areas back which party, and why.
Don't confuse with
- Psephology: it analyses election numbers and voting trends. Electoral geography studies the spatial side, meaning boundaries and where votes come from.