Complementary Factors of Formation of Electoral Activity in the Territorial Political System of Portugal

The article continues a comparative study on the determination of the cycles of evolution of electoral and geographic space in the countries of developed democracy. The cycle of evolution is expressed by the changing models of complementary activity of voters and depends on the form of government, party and electoral systems, etc. The subject of research is the electoral activity of the population of Portugal after 1975, by the country and by territorial districts, along with the circumstances that affect its level. It is established that in Portugal, list-number of voters is a factor having a downward effect on the index of electoral activity. In this country the list-number of voters greatly exceeds demo-migratory proportion. This circumstance is conditional upon the sustainable interests of territories, that does not permit reducing the number of elected representatives of those territories in the framework of a constitutional maximal number of members of Parliament and one-tier system of converting a list-number of voters in seats in elected bodies. At the regional level under the organization of national elections the principle of territorial representation dominates. The second feature of the country is that demographically unreasonable increase in the list-number of voters in Portugal is correlated with administrative-political interests of the regions and with their sizes. Historically feature of Portugal as a territorial unit of a global political space is the so-called “diaspora expansion.” Activity in the elections showed that the political preferences of external electors are represented in Parliament
weightier than the preferences of the residents inside the country. Inside the country the trend “the more populous district, the higher the turnout” emerges with time. The Portuguese model of complementary activity does not reflect the interparty transitions of power. Before the reform of 1991 the chaotic interweaving of mutually reinforcing factors took place. After 1991, there is a stable dominance of the group of middle regions. The specific trend of complementary activity of regions indicates the completion of the two-disc cyclicity of the evolution of electoral and geographical space.

voter turnout, general/list-number of voters, minimal interval, average level of activity, model of complementary activity, conversion formula, demo-migratory proportion, constitutional mechanism, diaspora expansion, cyclicity of evolution of electoral and geographical

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