Bipartisanship Breakdown, Functional Networks, and Forensic Analysis in Spanish 2015 and 2016 National Elections

Figure 4

(a, b) Heat map of the diversity index (, see the text) at the municipality level (the darker and the larger is, the less bipartisan the system is) for 2015 elections (a) and 2016 elections (c). One can see that overall the system is more diverse in 2015 and its diversity decreases in 2016. This result is in consonance with bipartisanship breakdown stalling, probably due to risk aversion that generates the uncertainty associated with not obtaining workable majorities in parliament. (c) Frequency histogram of for 2015 and 2016, highlighting an initially diverse voting ecosystem with (over four relevant parties on average) in 2015, and a clear shift towards a smaller diversity in 2016.

(a)

(b)

(c)