Spatial analysis of elections held in Hatay in thecontext of election geography (1973-2019)

Election geography, in any geographical context, provides the opportunity to evaluate the political orientations and characteristics of the political power distribution in the past and present, as well as the basis for inferences about the future. It is a discipline that investigates the spatial distribution of the relationship between the voter and the candidate to be elected, the factors affecting this distribution, the status of representation, regional differences and their reasons. "In electoral geography studies, the scale can be national, regional or local, it can be determined according to settlement types or the population can be used as a scale" (Çitçi 2005). In electoral geography, "The first Studies were made in France in 1913 by Andre Siegfried. In recent years, the term spatial model has been used frequently by political scientists and geographers in publications and meetings in the field of electoral geography. This model is especially used in the analysis of elections" (Karadoğan and Yeşilorman 2008). With the political geography becoming interested in elections, geographers have conducted research to determine whether the results are related to human and physical factors by making opinions and predictions about the elections according to the electoral districts and the socio-economic characteristics of the voters, by making evaluations about the election methods and results (Canakay 2004). Based on this general framework, the subject of the study is the spatial analysis of the province of Hatay within the scope of Election Geography. In this study, the effects of the results of the general and local elections held since 1973 on the temporal development of Hatay province will be examined.