Voting potential analysis for 2002-2018 parliamentary General elections

Elections are indispensable elements of democratic systems. Reflecting the national will to the ballot box, the citizen has a say in the future of the country. Voters are influenced by the political culture of the country in which they live with their beliefs, attitudes and value judgments, determines how they will shape their political actions and behaviors and is influenced by social, economic and political processes while making their choices. In this thesis, the concept of political culture affected by the electorate is examined and in the second part of the thesis, in order to help the research part, the periods of the parties that have been in power alone in the multi-party political life and the voting rates and changes in the general elections are examined. In this study, the voting potential of the ruling party, the Justice and Development Party and the opposition Republican People's Party, in the General Elections held between 2002 and 2018 were subjected to descriptive analysis. The study was limited to 16 metropolitan cities, and by comparing the votes and the number of MPs received by these two parties, changes in the voting potential were tried to be revealed. Keywords: Political Culture, Multi-Party Political Life, Parliamentary General Elections, Voting Potential, Justice and Development Party, Republican People's Party