Electricity Access and Voting Behaviour in the Mozambique Context

Electricity provision is a key public good and stated policy priority for many developing economies. How the rate and quality of this provision is influenced by incumbent parties during elections and how voters respond is a core area of democratic governance research. Current literature on the effect of electricity provision on support for the incumbent is limited, and it has mostly analysed that effect shortly before elections. This study of Mozambique probes the effect of electricity provision on support for the incumbent party in the 2009 and 2014 legislative elections. Subnational aggregate district level original data and binary logistic multiple regression analysis reveal that the provision of electricity has some limitations in explaining support for the incumbent party as the government does not deliberately use electricity provision to enhance its re-election prospects. In this context, what remains as the base of party support is the voters’ social characteristic of ethnicity. However, the significance of ethnicity on voting behaviour occurs in a one-party dominant system and electoral autocracy regime.