Local passion and national apathy: investigating the phenomenon of selective voting behaviour

Figures & data

Figure 1. Self-reported turnout in 2018 post-election study.

Source: Conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, CVVM Czech Republic, published by (Šaradín et al. 2021).

Table 1. Examples of voters` group and conceptualisation.

Group of voters	Local I.	National I.	Local II.	National II.	Local III.	National III.
Core voter	x	x	x	x	x	x
Core abstainer
Selective voter	x	x	x			x
Core local voter	x		x		x
Core national voter		x		x		x

Note: created by authors

Table 2. Descriptive statistics.

Variable	N (imputed dataset)	Mean	SD	Min	Max
Knows people from local council (H1)	8,149	0.799	0.401	0.000	1.000
Satisfaction with council functioninglast elections (H2)	8,134	0.000	0.500	−1.054	0.860
Results of the elections has broughtchange to the council (H3)	7,994	0.225	0.418	0	1
Trust in local institution (H4)	7,873	5.032	1.436	−0.285	9.533
Trust in central in institution (H4)	8,056	−0.052	0.507	−1.510	1.522
Satisfaction with local election results	8,055	0.000	0.500	−1.042	0.834
Political interest	7,935	−0.061	0.501	−1.548	1.745
Following politics	8,166	0.293	0.455	0	1
External efficacy	7,971	−0.068	0.500	−1.569	1.594
Internal efficacy	7,916	−0.057	0.500	−1.575	1.623
Perceived unimportance of vote	8,084	0.034	0.522	−1.273	2.155
Populist attitudes	8,111	0.000	0.500	−1.058	0.701
Opinion leadership	7,975	−0.040	0.510	−1.852	1.608
Political participation	8,113	0.789	0.826	0	2
Satisfaction with democracy	8,094	2.467	0.734	1	4
Democratic support	8,097	0.585	0.493	0	1
Political knowledge	8,183	−0.051	0.493	−0.868	1.051
SES	8,181	−0.041	0.510	−1.644	1.236
Sex (woman)	8,183	0.509	0.500	0	1
Age	8,182	−0.013	0.515	−0.946	1.265
Municipal size	8,183	2.280	0.912	1	4

Note: Variables Political participation, Satisfaction with democracy, Municipal size enter the model as dummy indicator variables. The summary table is produced using the already imputed dataset (10 imputations) so the number of observations does not equal to the total number of respondents in the CVVM survey (1,023). Those who did not respond (non-responses: No answer, Refusal, Doesn’t know) to the question on turnout are excluded. Non-binary and non-categorical variables (indices or 5-point ordinal scales) are scaled by two standard deviations (Gelman 2008) for easier visualisation of the regression coefficients.

Figure 2. Multinomial logistic regression.

n = 1023. Imputations: 10. Pseudo-R² over imputed data: 0.322. STATA 16.1, standardised logit coefficient by two standard deviations (see Gelman 2008). Since the plots are produced on the imputed dataset, the “mimrgns” package for STATA by Daniel Klein is being used with the “coefplot” package. The National Voter category also consists of citizens voting only in national elections and not in local elections.

Šaradín, P., T. Lebeda, J. Lysek, M. Soukop, D. Ostrá, and E. Lebedová. 2021. “Post-Election Survey Data: Local Democracy and the 2018 Local Elections in the Czech Republic.” Data in Brief 36:107039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2021.107039.

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Gelman, A. 2008. “Scaling Regression Inputs by Dividing by Two Standard Deviations.” Statistics in Medicine 27 (15): 2865–2873. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.3107.

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