Ethnicity, Market Integration, and Presidential Voting in Peru (2011–2021): A District-Level Aggregated Analysis

This article analyzes the territorial patterns of presidential voting in Peru between 2011 and 2021 using a district-level aggregated approach. In contrast to explanations that focus exclusively on poverty, rurality, or ideology, the study argues that the interaction between effective ethnicity and market integration constitutes a structuring axis of aggregated electoral behavior. Drawing on census data from the National Institute of Statistics (INEI, 2017) and district-level electoral results from the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), the article develops an explicit spatial harmonization strategy that allows for the construction of a comparable district-level dataset across three electoral cycles. From a theoretical perspective, the article introduces the concept of effective ethnicity, understood as a composite measure that integrates the relative and absolute size of the indigenous population, its public visibility, the local context of urbanization, and its articulation with economic integration. Empirically, the analysis estimates OLS models for each election, incorporating an interaction between effective ethnicity and market integration. The central argument is that Peru exhibits an ethnoeconomic cleavage analogous to the classic center–periphery divide, whose electoral expression varies across political contexts: latent in 2011, fragmented in 2016, and crystallized in 2021. The article contributes to debates on ethnic voting, territorial inequality, and electoral geography in democracies characterized by low levels of party system institutionalization, while also offering a replicable methodological framework for subnational comparative analysis.