From Kilometres to Alienation: Examining electoral accountability in amalgamated municipalities

Description

Dataset comes from an exit poll survey from the 2022 local elections in the Czech Republic. The data from voters were obtained after they left the polling stations. The survey was conducted in 53 non-randomly selected municipalities. The selection process aimed to maximize variance. Voters that took part in the survey were selected randomly. Data are subset limited to amalgamated municipalities. Data collection was done in centres and peripheries of such municipalities. The respondents living in the central part of the municipality were coded in the analysis as 1, while respondents residing in the peripheral parts were coded as 0. Furthermore, the data include information about the distance between the respondent’s unit of residence and the centre. The distance is measured as the shortest distance on a public road between the intravillan of the centre and the intravillan of the unit since such a measure is the closest to the assumed mechanism of the physical barrier. All the voters that participated in the survey were asked various questions regarding their electoral behaviour, their state of knowledge about local politics, their evaluations of the performance of the board of councillors or municipal council, and various sociodemographic questions. Voting for the incumbent is coded 1 when a respondent chose a political subject that was on the board of councillors in the past electoral term, or when they selected a candidate from a political subject. Additionally, dataset covers several control variables - perceived performance of incumbents related to the voter’s most salient issue, mostly the management of the municipality. Original 5 point scale is recoded into a dichotomous variable, where 1 indicated a positive voter assessment (original values 1 and 2) and 0 a not positive assessment (3, 4, 5). Secondly, there is support for the political party in the 2021 parliamentary elections, the most important elections in the Czech Republic. controlling whether respondents who voted for an incumbent voted for the same party in the last parliamentary elections. Third, location of the candidates for local government office is included to capture whether they were from the same part of the municipality (centre or periphery) as the respondent. Respondents’ level of trust in the board of councillors (incumbents) is also included in the data as well as sociodemographic controls (age, education, gender) .

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See R code.

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