Czech Political Parties and their Voters

This article deals primarily with voting patterns during elections to the Chamber of Representatives. The new trends in voting patterns [Matějů and Vlachová 1997] that emerged during the Senate elections are not considered in the article. Information on voting patterns during the parliamentary elections are supplemented by information gained from surveys carried out in autumn 1996. The article maps out the shifts in votes between the 1992 and 1996 elections and the developing stability of voting behaviour in relation to the developing system of political parties. It analyses certain motives underlying voting behaviour (including sympathy for the political party or the lack of it, potential second choice and negative voting), together with the distribution of voters between parties on the leftright spectrum. It discusses the links between these motives and the more stable alignment of voters with political parties, and the nature of the current governing coalition and of other coalitions which parties indicated were possible. The data used has been taken from various surveys, including two during parliamentary elections in the spring of 1996 and one in autumn 1996.