Sociocultural types of Russian voters

The study implements a differentiated approach to the portrait of Russian voters, according to which a detailed description of the palette of the specific types of Russian voters, differentiated on the basis of the social, political, and ideological stratification of Russian society, is given. The paper analyzes typical fragmentary classifications of the types of voters on the following grounds: the electoral identification, social status, the type of electoral behavior, the attitude to politics, the type of political culture, general world outlook value orientations. It is emphasized that the classification of the types of voters should be multi-layered. Under this principle, a classification of voters according to the type of electoral culture has been developed, based on four criteria: the degree of its development, the completeness of its elements; the integrity or mutual correspondence between its three main elements (electoral consciousness, electoral orientation, and electoral behavior); the electoral identification; the adequacy of electoral orientations to real socioeconomic interests and social status of voters. Four main types of voters have been identified. The first type is the conscious voter with a developed integral and adequate electoral culture. The second type is the spontaneous voter with a developed but contradictory electoral culture, which can be either adequate or inadequate. This type is represented by two subtypes: the conscious conformist and the unconscious intuit. The third type is the misguided voter with a one-sided, accentuated, contradictory, and inadequate electoral culture. The fourth type is the amorphous voter with a primitive, indefinite, and unstable (in the context of adequacy) electoral culture. In the context of the electoral process, the author analyzes the electoral base of the selectorate subjects, which is divided into two parts in terms of social status and interests - the native and involved voters. The dynamic nature of electoral cohorts is highlighted in terms of the selectorate subjects competition for the electorate.