THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF PROVINCES AND PEOPLES ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR IN THE 10TH ISLAMIC CONSULTATIVE ASSEMBLY ELECTION

Uneven economic development in the country causes severe conflict between provinces in the political demands and expectations of the results of elections. In the tenth parliamentary election, for the first time, separate lists of reformists and fundamentalists, in particular, faced each other around the country and the results provided suitable data for various social and political studies. In this study, the relationship between economic development of the provinces with the number of fundamentalist and reformist representatives has been examined. According to the theory of Maslow’s "hierarchy of needs", people are firstly motivated to meet their biological needs and then aim to attain social and cultural needs. So the underlying assumption of this research was that since fundamentalists often focused on themes such as livelihoods, increased subsidies, housing development, paying equity stakes as the first level of Maslow's needs won the election in less developed provinces. But the reformists with slogans such as expanding individual freedoms, supporting free media, paying attention to science and art, rule of law, social discipline, constructive interaction with the world and actualization of different talents aiming at higher levels of the hierarchy were the winner in the more developed provinces. This study was a documentary research and implemented statistical methods such as ANOVA analysis and LSD on existing data. The results showed that the higher the economic development of provinces, the more intention people showed toward reformists and vice versa, the lower the economic development of provinces, the more fundamentalist candidates were elected.