Why Do Citizens of Kyrgyzstan Vote in Elections with Forgone Outcomes?

Abstract

In the history of Kyrgyzstan’s independence since 1991, only the presidential election in 2017 could be described as more or less competitive and thus the results of it were not really clear in advance. When it comes to all the other presidential elections, excluding the first presidency of former President Askar Akaev and the presidency of the transitional period by Roza Otumbaeva, when there were no elections held, every presidential election ended with incumbent candidates’ success. Despite such an established pattern of incumbent candidate’s advantage, many people still continue to vote. With the aim to solve this puzzle, I asked the following research question: Why do people vote in elections with foregone outcomes? Using a respondent recruitment strategy of asking preliminary questions at different locations in Bishkek and online on social media applications, I identified those who voted at least in one of the presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan starting from the times of gaining independence. Then, I invited by approbation 21 respondents for an in-depth interview to learn the reasons why they vote/d. The responses were analyzed by using qualitative analysis methods. The findings from micro-level individual interviews suggest that citizens of Kyrgyzstan vote due to civic duty, to take off the responsibility from their chest, to oppose the incumbent candidate and to prevent the falsification of their votes. Unlikely from the survey, which gives clear-cut variables behind voting, such as “civic duty”, “support for democracy”, the interview was able to unpack those clear-cut variables into more complete stories of why voters come to any of these choices, what meanings do they attach to the act of voting. When existing quantitative studies tell us such variations that some vote due to non-economic reasons, or that voting can be an act of civic duty, generally, a more complete picture with all the possible nuances could have been achieved only through a qualitative study.