How Limited Service Availability Pushes People in Peripheries Towards Populism

This paper investigates the link between service availability, and populist attitudes and voting for populist parties in the Czech Republic. Despite growing attention to rural discontent, the role of constraints given by poor service availiability in shaping political behaviour remains understudied. Data from an exit poll conducted in 20 peripheral municipalities (and 10 non-peripheral municipalities as a reference category) during the 2025 parliamentary elections are used to examine this link. The dataset includes questions on voters’ satisfaction with public transport, as well as the availability of schools, jobs, and healthcare. These survey data are accompanied by real figures on the number of public transport connections and the local presence of key services. The analysis explores the impact of these factors on two sets of dependent variables: populist attitudes (battery of 8 questions) and populist voting.