Social and socio-territorial electoral base of political parties in post-revolutionary Tunisia

Abstract

By giving a comfortable advance to the Islamist party of Ennahdha (around 37% of the votes), the first free elections of independent Tunisia on 23 October 2011 have taken by surprise most observers. In this paper, we identify the social and socio-territorial bases of major Tunisian parties through combining quantitative analyses at different scales and field surveys in specific localities. Although most interpretations have focused on the cultural modernist vs. conservative cleavage, hence obscuring the class cleavage, our analyses highlight very differentiated socio-territorial electoral bases for the main parties and indicate deep social differences in voting behaviour, especially within cities. In addition, the consensus expressed by most parties about the need to reduce regional inequalities hides very dissimilar voting behaviour in peripheral and core areas. While allowing for a better interpretation of electoral results, our analyses also provide tools to understand possible...