The aim of this paper is to show growing social and class inequalities in turnout in the Czech Republic between 1990 and 2017 and to explain why it happens. During the first two decades of democratic political competition, the Czech Republic became a country with one of the largest difference in electoral participation of educational groups (Gallego 2015). The turnout of those with university education is almost twice bigger than turnout of those with elementary education.
Thus, the study first focuses on a description of the evolution of the relationship between turnout and key characteristics of socio-economic status: education, income, and social class. Secondly, the study tests three explanations of why there is a growth in social inequalities in turnout. These explanations are based on declining satisfaction with politics, declining partisanship, and a declining sense of vote efficacy. This research utilizes a pooled dataset of cross-sectional post-election surveys fielded over two decades in the Czech Republic and employs convergence models to analyze the change in turnout among population subgroups in time. There are signs of a gradual crystallization of educational, income and class inequalities in electoral participation. These changes are connected to the declining perception among the poorer segments of a society that voting matters.
