The Impact of Minority-Majority Districts: Evidence from Ukraine

How do minority-majority districts affect the voter behavior of minorities and election of minority candidates in Ukraine? Studies on minority-majority districts in the American politics literature suggest that such districts are instrumental to election of minority candidates. Very few scholars have extended such research to other countries. This article examines the impact of minority-majority districts on electoral outcomes in Ukraine, in which ethnicity is apparently a salient issue but ethnic identity is complicated by multiple cleavages based on ethnicity, language, and region. Using district-level census and electoral data, the relationship between the ethnic composition of an electoral district and election of minority candidates is examined.