There is a broad consensus that the financial crisis and subsequent refugee crisis of 2015 have fuelled the relative success of populist parties and leaders in a series of recent elections in the US, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Austria. The populist wave has its variation also in Central-Eastern Europe. The outcomes of the Czech Parliamentary Elections 2017 constitute breakpoint with post-1989 regime. While the 2013 legislative election brought down the Civic Democrats (ODS) as one of the pillars of the traditional party system, the 2017 legislative election shattered the Social democrats, the other fundamental part of post-1989 party system. The electoral campaign was shaped by populist rhetoric combined with anti-system ethos, and traditional parties received all-time low support. Moreover, 18 % of all votes went to parties demanding constitutional changes. Additionally, the so-called "protest parties" defining themselves as an opposition to traditional political establishment received around two-fifths of all votes which translated into half of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Voters voiced their discontent and distrust to the political establishment and massively voted for those political subjects quintessential for their populist rhetoric and anti-system ethos.
The aim of the paper is to analyse the roots of a populist support in the Czech Republic. Combining both the individual data from large surveys conducted by the Sociological Institue of Czech Academy of Science (to avoid ecological fallacy) as well as all the electoral precincts` electoral and social-demographic data provided by the Czech Statistical Office. The aggregate level data bears 15 000 electoral precincts that have a hierarchical structure. The precincts are clustered by the cities, administrative districts, and regions. This allows us to model contextual factor variables on a higher level of the regression models. Our finding is further supported by Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) that allows identifying the spatial determinants of electoral success of the populist parties.
Our preliminary findings show that some parties were able to appeal to different classes concurrently using varying voter perception of the issue positions of the candidates or by shifting their appeal from one cluster of the electorate to another while keeping the substantial part of the former. Voters dealignment also opened space for new populist parties, but there was substantial spatial variation. Although the main cleavage between cities and rural areas has been of major concern also in the media (e.g. Brexit, Trump etc.) and was the case in the Czech elections, such clear cleavage almost diminishes when controlling for social demographic characteristics in both models based on individual as well as precinct data. Moreover, the GWR underestimated the electoral success in the rural regions rich on social capital and where citizens fare socially and economically better. These major preliminary findings are of crucial importance in explaining not the success of populist parties, but their failures.
An example of the analysis by the team of the proposed paper and Esri company
http://arcdata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=28414bc133e542db930764cc5c11ee33
