RE-SEGMENTING OPPOSITION VOTES IN TURKEY USING A RELATIONAL APPROACH: THE BOXER, THE PRAGMATIST, AND THE VISIONARY

Year 2021, , 96 - 132, 24.04.2021

Neslihan Çevik

https://doi.org/10.18490/sosars.927221

Abstract

This paper studies voting from a relational approach and builds a new model for voter segmentation using qualitative data from Turkey. To operationalize a relational approach in the field, I employed ‘switch interviews’ with 15 participants recruited from a randomly sampled national poll (March 2020), who in common opted for one of the recently founded parties in Turkey when asked “who they would vote for if there was an election tomorrow”. In this new model, the object of inquiry for voter segmentation is neither broad structural traits a voter has (ethnicity, religion, ideology, sexuality, etc) nor atomistic calculations. Instead, it is the actual needs and concerns voters are trying to meet in a system of relations. Drawing from these needs, I identify three relational voter profiles: the Boxer, the Pragmatist and the Visionary. These new relational segments help us better understand the causal drivers for support to the new parties in Turkey and give us clues into the future political debates and shifts in the country. The aim here is not to narrow voter segmentation to a single right approach. Nor the study claims to uncover all opinions /needs of the opposition electors who lean towards the new parties; it certainly does not claim to have scanned all opposition voters in Turkey. Rather, the paper aims to push the boundaries of the existing models by adopting a relational thinking and a new tool, switch interviewing, and build a new model for voter segmentation. Such a push is mandated in part by the changing nature of political engagement and citizenship. The paper makes two original contributions. It proposes a new model for voter segmentation using a relational approach and introduces a new methodological tool, switch interviews, to qualitative research.

Keywords

Relational Sociology, Electoral Behavior, Switch Interviews, Justice and Development Party, Turkish Electorate

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