The Influence of Territorially Specific Factors on the Formation of Political Orientations of Voters

Research concentrates on the underlying factors that influence political orientations and attides of individuals. Are political orientations and attitudes influenced rather by individual's position in the social structure or by territorial context? Methodological aim targeted a possibility of estimation of regional attitudinal data from the results of nationally representative sociological surveys and the information about the structure of regional populations. A large survey (ca 5 000 individals) was conducted in 2000 with over-sampling in four regions defined by groups of districts. The technique of face-to-face interviews with standardized questionnaires was used. The resulted data files were enriched by contextual data of regions. The results of analyses support the hypothesis that regional difference both in term of party preferences, and more general political and moral attitudes exists; thus, the influence of contextual factors for the political orientation can be proved. The testing of ”model for adaptation of contingency tables to local marginals” showed that the model is usable for a number of different tasks, including the estimating the missing data in a time-series. Developed method is effective and the results provided are robust especially in situations when the relations among variables are not too much influenced by territorially specific factors. In an opposite situation the territorially specific factors are detected. The model measuring the level of identification with types of political culture was developed to handle attitudinal data related to political culture in a concept of Almond and Verba. Mixed types of political culture, can be found in observed regions. As a feature of civic society  the NGOs were investigated in the regions. The research made possible the completion of testing of the scale measuring "the strength of personality".