Proceedings of The 7th International Conference on Modern Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2023
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/7th.icmrss.2023.06.100
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Segmentation of Czech Voters: Diversity of the Decision-Making Processes
Radek Pileček
ABSTRACT:
This contribution is focused on voting behaviour in Czech parliamentary elections. The main goal is to evaluate the key factors of voter decision-making in 4 different categories (attitudes of political parties, candidates, election campaigns, opinions of other people) and subsequent segmentation of voters according to the importance of these (total 17) factors. The data used were obtained through an online questionnaire survey on a representative sample of the Czech adult population (N=1,826). By combining factor analysis and cluster analysis, 7 segments of voters were identified. Individuals within a given segment were as similar as possible in terms of the factors of their decision-making process and, conversely, as different as possible from other segments. The identified voter segments are described not only according to factors of electoral behaviour but also taking into account socio-demographic characteristics, interest in politics or party preferences. Different representation of individual segments among voters of different political parties and spatial differentiation from a regional perspective outlined two applications of this study. The findings should primarily contribute to a deeper understanding of individual and territorial differences in voting behaviour, but secondarily they can also be used for practical purposes in the optimization of targeted election campaigns.
keywords: cluster analysis, elections, political parties, segmentation, voting behaviour