The region-of-origin effect on voting behavior: The case of Turkey’s internal migrants

In this paper, the relative importance of the origins and destinations of Turkey’s internal migrants on their voting behavior is examined. By using a pre-election survey from 2007, it is first demonstrated that migrants vote differently than non-migrants. Then province-level election data is brought into the analysis to determine whether migrants’ political tendencies are associated more with the voting patterns prevailing in their host provinces or the provinces they are originally from. According to the results of the econometric models estimated, a positive and significant ‘origin’ effect exists for most migrants, but a significant ‘destination’ effect is lacking. The origin effect estimate implies that if the vote share of a party exceeds its nationwide average by 10 percentage points in a given province, then the probability that this party will be chosen by a migrant born in that province increases by about 5 percentage points. This finding is attributed to continued cultural and economic ties of the migrants with their origins and with fellow migrants from their hometowns at their destinations.