«Friends and Neighbors Effect»: 75 Years of Geographical Analysis of Elections

The «friends and neighbors effect» is one of the classic contextual effects in electoral geography. It manifests as an increase in a candidate’s support in the vicinity of their home, birthplace, or other places to which they are connected. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the «candidate effect» or the «hometown advantage». This article provides an overview of the studies of this effect, formulates its main features and peculiarities, as well as the key problems facing researchers in this field. Despite the fact that 75 years have passed since the «discovery» of this phenomenon, research on the «friends and neighbors effect» is still concentrated in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and a few European countries, while studies on other regions are rare. In Russia, it has also received little attention, with the first article devoted to this effect having appeared only in 2022. However, in the last 15 years, there has been explosive growth in interest in the «friends and neighbors effect» in English-language literature. It is during this period that a large part of the research on Eastern European countries has emerged, as well as several studies on African and East Asian contexts. Another pressing issue is the transition from the stage of accumulating information and initial results for the countries to the synthetic stage of generalizing knowledge based on comparative researches. Perhaps such generalization will help answer a number of unresolved questions.