Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Kálmán Petőcz: National Populism and Electoral Behaviour
Kálmán Petőcz not materialize its leaders’ expectations as the duel between SMK-MKP and Most-Hid took place largely within the ethnic Hungarian electorate. In the Prešov region, a candidate for Most-Hid ran independently for the post of regional governor but received only 0.5% of the popular vote. CoiNclusiOIN In this study, we analyzed electoral behaviour of voters inhabiting ethnically mixed territories of southern Slovakia. We were particularly interested in areas where Hungarian-speaking population constitutes a majority. We examined especially voting patterns of Slovak voters who were for the purposes of this study defined either as non-Hungarians or as SMK-MKP non-voters. We also partially focused on electoral behaviour of ethnic Hungarians. We examined several types of municipalities:- Slovak municipalities located along the ethnic border;- Slovak enclaves surrounded by territories more or less homogeneously populated by ethnic Hungarians;- Slovak villages founded during the process of organized colonization after World War I and World War II; in this category, we distinguished between villages colonized prevailingly by Slovak settlers from northern parts of the country, villages colonized largely by Moravians and Czechs and villages populated predominantly by Slovaks repatriates from Hungary;- Municipalities with mixed population comprising Slovaks, ethnic Hungarians and Roma;- Towns located on ethnically mixed territories. At the same time, we tried to take into account other possible factors that may affect voters’ electoral behaviour, such as proximity of large towns or state affiliation of examined municipalities or micro-regions during the period of 1938-1945. Our principal objective was to find out whether and to what degree is it possible to capture trends of improvement or deterioration in mutual Slovak-Hungarian relations by analyzing electoral behaviour of people who inhabit ethnically mixed territories. Slovak-Hungarian relations rank high on the list of issues that are frequently abused in political agenda of all national-populist subjects on Slovakia’s political scene as well as on the other side of the Slovak-Hungarian border; however, this study focused exclusively on analyzing the impact of national populism on voting patterns of voters in southern Slovakia. 160
