Uso del Índice de Moran y LISA para explicar el ausentismo electoral rural en Ecuador

Abstract

In Ecuador, voting is not only a right but an obligation that comprises an essential part of the democratic organization when it comes to the time to choose their leaders that will govern the country. Within the geographic framework for elections is important to analyse electoral abstentionism, especially in rural areas, whose settings are more prone to this phenomenon due to the existence of many difficulties in the access to the nearest voting precinct, which means long transportation distances and high costs to mobilize. For this reason The National Electoral Council of Ecuador has created jurisdictions called “electoral rural zones” for the purpose of facilitating voting access.
The following paper was generated using two spatial autocorrelation tools of the Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA): Moran’s Index and LISA Index (Local Indicators of Spatial Association). Moran’s Index measures the overall spatial autocorrelation of the absenteeism among the electoral zones, and it evaluates whether the pattern expressed is clustered, dispersed, or random. On the other hand, LISA Index demonstrates on a local level the significance of local statistic and the spatial clusters of the absenteeism in rural zones and how each spatial unit differs or resembles from their neighbors.
Therefore, this analysis compiles statistical and spatial data of the electoral rural zones created in 2009 and 2014 to understand the benefits of creating electoral zones and how these impact on the electoral absenteeism.