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Elections

South African electoral data at the constituency level, covering white parliamentary elections under apartheid and the transition period.

Key Files

File Description
elections_completed_converted/schoeman_elections.csv Schoeman election data 1938-1976
elections_completed_converted/house_assembly_*.csv House of Assembly results 1981-1989
elections_completed_converted/referendum_*.csv Referendum results 1983, 1992
crosswalk_electoral_magisterial_districts_1980_clean.csv Electoral-to-magisterial district mapping

Coverage

  • Schoeman historical data 1938-1976 (oDesk digitization)
  • House of Assembly results 1981-1989 (oDesk digitization)
  • Three Houses results 1989 (oDesk digitization)
  • Referendum results 1960, 1983, 1992
  • NEW (2026-03-28): stata_elections_converted/ — 11 CSVs converted from cleaned Stata .dta files, covering 1943-1987. Fills the 1974 and 1977 gaps not covered by the oDesk digitization.
  • Electoral-magisterial district crosswalks (1966, 1974, 1980)
  • Electoral division geocoding (approximate coordinates, 437 constituencies)

Key Finding: Eiselen Electoral Divergence

The electoral data, combined with the Eiselen Line geographic classification and agricultural census, reveals that economic exposure to the 1974 labor shock drove white electoral realignment:

  • Districts east of the Eiselen Line — where farmers employed Black labor and competed directly with mines — shifted +6.3 percentage points toward right-wing parties (HNP/CP) by 1987 relative to western districts (p < 0.001)
  • NP vote share declined -17.4pp more in eastern constituencies (p < 0.001)
  • The divergence emerged only after 1977, consistent with the labor shock mechanism rather than pre-existing cultural differences
  • With maize suitability controls, the employment channel coefficient remains significant, identifying labor market exposure as the mechanism

This is the lead empirical finding of the book manuscript. See Data Appendix specification R10 and Figure A.2 (Eiselen electoral event study).

Provenance

  • Source: Schoeman electoral data (1938-1976); Government Gazette official results (1977-1992)
  • Digitization: oDesk contractors (2013-14) for Excel; Stata cleaning scripts for .dta files
  • CSV conversion: 2025-11-26 (oDesk batch), 2026-03-28 (Stata conversion)