Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)

Kálmán Petőcz: National Populism and Electoral Behaviour

National Populism and Electoral Behaviour

Table 3 as well as Map 3 clearly shows that electoral behaviour patterns of voters in southern Slovakia are much more structured than Map 1 presented at the beginning of this study seemed to suggest. From looking at Map 1, one would probably conclude that Slovakia was divided into two stripes (a broader and a narrower) characterized by diametrically different electoral behaviour; however, Map 3 shows that the said conclusion does not apply to Slovak (or, more precisely, non-Hungarian) voters in southern Slovakia. Had it been up to ethnic Slovak voters only, the incumbent President Ivan Gašparovič would have won not only in all northern districts but also in all southern districts except Senec, Dunajská Streda and Komárno districts and the Štúrovo constituency. Iveta Radičová would have convincingly claimed a single district, namely Bratislava I (Old Town) where she received almost three in four ballots cast by Slovak voters (72.32%). She would have also comfortably claimed the Košice I district (Old Town) on the back of 65.16% of the ‘Slovak’ popular vote as well as the remaining seven districts in Bratislava and Košice where Gašparovič recorded the worst results. All in all, Slovak (i.e. non- Hungarian) voters would have elected the opposition candidate in only 13 out of 79 districts (including the Štúrovo obvod and the altogether 9 districts of Bratislava and Košice).

If we take a closer look at electoral behaviour of Slovaks (i.e. non- Hungarians) from southern districts, we see that Iveta Radičová would have won by a convincing margin (i.e. two-third majority) only in the Dunajská Streda district where Ivan Gašparovič received 31% of all ballots cast by Slovak voters. Still, this number significantly changes the initial impression made by aggregated data featured in Table 2 according to which the incumbent president received only 5.1% of the popular vote in the said district. In the remaining three southern districts where Iveta Radičová won a majority of the ‘Slovak’ popular vote, the outcome was much closer. The incumbent president managed to attract about three in seven votes (42% to 44%) cast by non-Hungarian voters from Senec and Komárno districts as well as the Štúrovo constituency.20

Table 3 also justifies a conclusion that voter support for President Gašparovič (and most probably for parties that supported him) is inversely proportional to ethnic Hungarians’ share of the given district’s total population, i.e. the higher the share of ethnic Hungarians, the lower the voter support for the incumbent ruling coalition. Could this justify a conclusion that Slovak and ethnic Hungarian inhabitants of truly mixed municipalities and regions show more understanding to each other and are less likely to vote for political parties that like to use the so-called ethnic card in their campaigning? The point is that a comparison of Map 2 (Ethnic make-up of Slovakia’s population) and

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