Análisis geoespacial de las elecciones presidenciales en México, 2012

Abstract

The importance of electoral geography, as a branch of political geography, stems from the opportunity it provides to explain electoral preferences in terms of territories. Electoral research with a geographic focus assumes that individual political preferences concentrated in a particular location are not unrelated, but are in fact correlated. This article discusses the existence of a geography of the presidential vote in the 2012 elections in Mexico. After reviewing the literature and arguing in favor of the use of exploratory spatial data analysis, the article proposes the use of spatial autocorrelation indices for the study of presidential elections. The proposed scheme, while offering a glimpse of territorial political polarization in Mexico, allows for a valuation of the explanatory power of geographic space in electoral processes.