Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia 3
Kamil Gregor
∗
Abstract
The article explores similarities in the structure of voting transitions between the last parliamentary elections and the recent presidential elections and between the first and the second round of these elections in Czech Republic and Slovakia. The structure of voting transitions was estimated using the hierarchical Bayesian model of ecological inference from a dataset of electoral results on the municipal level. Analysis finds many striking resemblances between the two countries, most notably the loosing presidential candidates being unable to secure full support of their parties’ electoral base in the first round and a ract voters of unsuccessful candidates in the second round.
The winning candidates exhibited much more heterogeneous electoral support in both rounds of the elections.
The similarities could be accounted for by the theory of second order elections or the theory of “deidentification” of politics.
Keywords residential elections, parliamentary elections, Czech Republic, Slovakia, ecological inference, statistical modelling, voting transitions
Note
Príspevok je súčasťou riešenia grantového projektu VEGA č. 1-0346/12 „Priestorovo-politické systémy na začiatku
21. storočia a perspektívy ich vývoja“ (vedúci projektu: prof. RNDr. Robert Ištok, PhD.).
∗
Author is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk university, Joštova 10,
602 00 Brno, Česká republika/Czech Republic.

4 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
The Czech Republic and Slovakia have recently witnessed the presidential elections, the former country actually the first elections when the president was elected by the popular vote. There are striking similarities between electoral outcomes in both countries. The defeated candidates Robert Fico and
Karel Schwarzenberg were nominated by relatively successful political parties with parliamentary mandates.¹ Both candidates were high ranking members of the cabinet while their opponents Andrej
Kiska and Miloš Zeman were not directly connected to any large party.² In both countries, the difference of electoral support between the two most successful candidates was not high in the first round (0.8% in the Czech elections and 4.0% in the Slovak elections) while in the second round, it was much higher (9.6% in the former country and 18.8% in the la er country). Voters were also relatively highly fragmented among a large number of candidates in both countries. In the Czech Republic, the two most successful candidates only gained 52.0% of the vote in the first round. In Slovakia, it was 47.6%. The difference between electoral support of the second and the third most successful candidates was low in both cases.
Shares of votes alone can hardly give us, however, sufficient information to determine causes of these similarities in electoral behaviour. Why Robert Fico did not win even though his party won by a landslide in the last parliamentary elections and has kept most of its support since then? And why
Karel Schwarzenberg did not manage to gather enough voters between the two rounds of elections as
Andrej Kiska did? These questions can be answered by reconstructing a piece of information that is normally hidden in the electoral data—the structure of voting transitions between two elections or two rounds of the same elections. The aim of this article is to find out whether both countries experienced the same structure of shi s of voters from political parties in the last parliamentary elections and candidates in the presidential elections and between the candidates in the first and second rounds of the presidential elections.
The principle of preserving the secrecy of the ballot causes an irreversible loss of information about the actual structure of voting transitions. Any method of its reconstruction is inescapably based on an indirect estimation with a level of uncertainty. Methods based on surveying a random sample of voters are almost always the most suitable ones to perform this task. However, no such surveys were conducted in case of the 2014 Slovak presidential elections. Therefore, I am forced to use statistical modelling of voting transition based on electoral data aggregated to the level of a large number of very small territorial units, in this case to the municipal level. This method estimates the most probable structure of transitions given a set of statistical assumptions. It has been used to study the Czech parliamentary
(Lyons and Linek 2010), senatorial (Pink and Gregor 2011), presidential (Gregor 2014a), European
(Linek and Lyons 2007) and regional (Gregor and Gongala 2014) elections. This article employs the hierarchical Bayesian model of ecological inference. I perform original research for Slovakia and use results of statistical modelling published previously (Gregor 2014b,
2013) for the
Czech Republic. This is the first time voting transitions have been statistically modelled in Slovakia.
This article is split into several sections. The first one briefly describes the model used to estimate the structure of voting transitions. The second section comments on data sources and strategies to construct a symmetric dataset. The following two sections present results of the statistical modelling in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. The last section compares the structure of voting transitions the two countries and presents possible explanations for observed similarities. This article does not strive to test these hypotheses since two cases is not a sufficiently large number to perform a rigorous test. The last section of this article rather suggests possible future research designs that would have this capability.
¹Political party Smer—sociálna demokracia (henceforth called Smer) of Robert Fico managed to obtain unusually high support of 44.4% in the 2012 parliamentary elections. The second most popular party only gained 8.9% of the vote. Moreover,
Smer has retained its popular appeal since then with 38.1% support in an opinion poll by Focus (2014) in January 2014, when the second most popular party polled only 12.7%. Karel Schwarzenberg’s TOP 09 was not comparably popular but still polled some 16% in January 2013 (CVVM 2013).
²Miloš Zeman used to be the chairman of ČSSD but that was 12 years before the 2013 presidential elections. By the time of the elections, he was a honorary chairman of SPOZ that only polled 3.5% of popular support (CVVM 2013).

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia 5
As it has been said, information on the actual structure of the voting transition is always irreversibly lost and cannot be retrieved. It can, however, be approximately reconstructed using two groups of methods.
The first group contains methods based on direct surveying of a random sample of voters. There are four types of these surveys: panel surveys, pre-election surveys, exit polls and post-elections surveys.
They differ in who is being surveyed and how. If the respondents are selected randomly, results of the survey closely approximate the actual unobserved social reality. This makes survey methods optimal strategies for voting transitions research in most situations.
There may, however, be serious problems with surveying voters. In pre-election surveys, there is always a portion of respondents who are not certain about their future electoral behaviour or may change political preferences before elections. Exit polls do not provide any information about previous electoral behaviour of citizens who do not participate in the given elections. And all surveys obviously run into the risk of respondents providing incorrect answers. Many voters do not remember which political party or candidate they supported in previous elections, especially in situations when a number of years elapsed. This o en causes distortions in the distribution of voters among political parties in the sample despite the respondents being selected randomly.
There were no surveys conducted before or during the 2014 Slovak presidential elections which would be suitable for reconstructing information about voting transitions. This forces me to utilize the second group of methods for estimating the structure of these transitions—statistical modelling. The specific model used in this article is a hierarchical Bayesian model of ecological inference (Rosen et al. 2001). The model uses aggregate data, in this case municipal-level data, to draw inferences about individual behaviour. It consists of three steps. In the first step, a suitable probabilistic distribution of values of unobserved variables is selected using distributions of values of observed variables. In this case, the observed variables are shares of votes for political parties and presidential candidates and the unobserved variables are values in a contingency table of voting transitions between two elections.
An output of this method is a table similar to table 1. Variable in elections t
. Variables v
1 to v i − 1 denote shares of vi the share of votes for other parties. Variable s and s j − 1 denote shares of j − 1 other parties. Variables denoted
0 i − 1 v
0 denotes the share of non-voters relevant parties in these elections and variable denotes the share of non-voters in elections relevant parties in these elections and s j t + 1
, s
1 denotes the share of votes for
β are unobserved quantities of all possible combinations of electoral behaviour. The table does not include first-time voters, as well as voters who died between the two elections, voters who lost the right to vote etc. Since their quantities are usually unknown it is necessary to omit them.
Table 1: A contingency table of voting transitions between two elections
Elections t
Non-voters
Party 1
Party 2
Non-voters Party 1 Party 2 … Party i
β
0,0
β 0,1
β 0,2
…
β
1,0
β 1,1
β
1,2
…
β
2,0
β 2,1
β 2,2
…
…
…
β i − 1,0
β i − 1,1
… β i − 1,2
… …
− 1 Other parties Total
β i ,0
β i ,1 s
0 s
1
β i ,2 s
2
… … …
Party
Total j − 1 β
0, j − 1
Other parties β
0, j v
0
β
1, j − 1
β
2, j − 1
β
1,0 v
1
β v
2,
2 j
…
…
β i − 1, j − 1
β i − 1, j v i − 1
β i , j − 1
β i , j v i s j − 1 s j
1

6 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
It is assumed that values of the unobserved variables follow the multidimensional Dirichlet distribution. It is a very general distribution that likely covers all actual distributions in social reality. In the second step, each territorial unit representing one data point is given an interval where a value of an unobserved variable must necessarily fall given the values of the observed variables. For example, if
Robert Fico gained 35 votes in the first round and 53 votes in the second round in a hypothetical municipality, it is possible to determine that the share of voters who supported him in both rounds cannot be lower than 0% and higher than 66% of all voters that supported him in the second round (35 divided by 53 is 66%).
In the third step, all values within this interval are assigned a probability of being the true value according to the Dirichlet distribution. Its statistical parameters are determined using distributions of the observed variables via the Bayes Theorem (see the formal description of the model in Rosen et al.
2001 and Lau et al. 2007 and further literature on ecological inference—King 1997, King et al. 1999, King et al. 2004). The model used in this article is commonly applied to reconstruct individual behaviour from aggregate data in a variety of political science research designs (for example Johnston et al. 2004,
Herron and Sekhon 2005, King et al. 2008, Kopstein and Wi enberg 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010a, 2010b, 2011a,
2011b).
Validity of the model is determined by measuring a match between the contingency table estimated by the model and by an electoral survey. The most extensive research on this subject to date was conducted by Lucas Leemann a Philipp Leimgruber (2009) who compared estimates of religious affiliation of voters in 113 Swiss referenda produced by six statistical models. The match between the model and a survey can be calculated using so called index of similarity. It is a sum of absolute values of differences between a survey ( β p ) and the model ( β m ) divided by two and subtracted from zero:
S = 1 − i i
∑
= 0 j j
∑
= 0
!
!
β pij
2
− β mij
!
!
Table 2 presents values of this index for several unpublished models of voting transitions between two parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic between 1996 and 2010. The transitions were estimated using municipal-level data (some 6,300 territorial units). The estimates are compared with results of the SC & C exit polls in 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010 (see Gregor forthcoming for further details).
Raw values of the index are not comparable across models because the size and shape of the contingency table are not the same. The smaller the table, the more likely it is to correctly place a voter into a correct cell of the table at random. To compare the values, they must be standardized by the size of the contingency table. The standardized index informs whether the statistical model is more accurate than a “model” of uniform distribution of voters across the contingency table.
Table 2: Index of similarity between the model and an exit poll survey
Voting transitions
Parliamentary elections 2006 and 2010
Parliamentary elections 2002 and 2006
Parliamentary elections 1996 and 1998
Parliamentary elections 1998 and 2002
Raw index
89.4%
89.0%
88.6%
83.7%
Standardized index
2.29
2.27
2.11
1.94
Size of the contingency table
56
42
64
48

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
In this article, I present results of statistical modelling based on Czech and Slovak electoral data. Details on data sources of the Czech model have been published previously (Gregor 2014b,
2013). For Slovakia, the modelling is based on a dataset that consists of the results of the 2012 parliamentary and the 2014 presidential elections in 2,926 municipalities. The largest cities are split into several smaller territorial units. For example, Bratislava is split into 17 units. This increases granularity of the data and effectively mitigates the so called “Manha an effect”.³ Data were extracted from the Slovak
Statistical Office electoral website (Voľba prezidenta Slovenskej republiky 2014) that provides downloadable electoral results on municipal level in machine readable formats within hours a er elections.
The model assumes that population remains constant in both elections. This obviously does not correspond to reality. In several years between the parliamentary and the presidential elections, some voters die, some gain or lose the right to vote and some cast their votes in two different territorial units.
These problems are either unsolvable or marginal so it is necessary to omit them. The two years that elapsed between the 2012 parliamentary elections and the 2014 presidential elections in Slovakia are not a sufficiently long period of time to pose a risk of statistical inference distortion. If the number of all registered voters differs in one territorial unit in the two elections, the difference is added to non-voters.
Under normal circumstances, the number of non-voters is calculated as n t
= v t
− i i
∑
= 1 s t , i
, where s ti n t denotes the number of non-voters in elections denotes number of votes for a party t
, v t denotes the number of all registered voters, i
. When constructing a dataset for statistical modelling the number of non-voters is calculated as n t
= max ( v t
, v t + 1
) − i
∑ i = 1 s t , i
, where v t is the number of all registered voters in elections voters in elections t t and v t + 1 is the number of all registered
+ 1
. The number of non-voters in elections t + 1 can be calculated as n t + 1
= max ( v t
, v t + 1
) − i
∑ i = 1 s t + 1, i
.
In both the Czech and the Slovak elections, electoral support for non-parliamentary parties is added up to a residual category. Electoral support for presidential candidates that failed to obtain at least 5% of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections in collapsed into a residual category as well.
Table 3 shows the structure of voting transitions between the 2012 parliamentary elections and the first round of the 2014 presidential elections in Slovakia. Sum of all cells in the table adds up to 100% of all registered voters. We can, for example, see that 38% of the voters did not participate in any of the two elections.
Tables 4 and 5 contain identical information recalculated so that columns and rows add up to 100%.
This is generally more useful since we usually want to see composition of the electorate of a single party or candidate. I report all three tables for the four models presented in this article for reader’s easier orientation in the figures.
³The “Manha an effect” is a special case of information loss due to data aggregation. It is a situation when there is a data point representing very large area or population in a dataset of many small territorial units. This data asymmetry can cause distortions when statistical methods are applied. The effect is named a er one of its prime examples, the New York borough of Manha an (King 1997).
7

8 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
Table 3: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in Slovakia (values lower than 1% are omitted)
Non-voters
Smer
KDH
OĽ
Most-Híd
SDKÚ
SaS
Other
Non-voters Fico Kiska Procházka Kňažko Bárdos Other
38%
9% 12%
2%
5%
3%
1%
1%
2%
10%
2%
1%
1%
1%
2%
1%
2%
1%
2%
Table 4: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in Slovakia—column totals (values lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters
Smer
KDH
OĽ
Most-Híd
SDKÚ
SaS
Other
Total
Non-voters Fico Kiska Procházka Kňažko Bárdos Other
66%
15%
1%
17%
100%
20%
2%
3%
24%
13%
8%
11%
19%
100% 100% 100%
55%
37%
5%
1%
100%
22%
2%
1%
18%
2%
28%
21%
6%
100%
2%
1%
1%
85%
2%
2%
7%
12%
2%
7%
100% 100%
1%
30%
44%
4%
Table 5: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in Slovakia—row totals (values lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters
Smer
KDH
OĽ
Most-Híd
SDKÚ
SaS
Other
Non-voters Fico Kiska Procházka Kňažko Bárdos Other
92%
32% 44%
2%
7%
5%
4%
6%
77%
5%
1%
6%
55%
39%
27%
43%
16%
19%
61%
11%
1%
2%
1%
3%
1%
23%
3%
52%
45%
3%
52%
2%
2%
1%
Total
100%
4% 100%
29% 100%
4% 100%
1% 100%
15% 100%
2% 100%
2% 100%
Information in tables 4 and 5 is visualized by stacked bar charts 1 and 2. Size of a bar corresponds with the share of votes of a given party or candidate. Colours inside the bar correspond to the structure of voting transitions to or from this party or candidate. Therefore, the colourful segments show absolute numbers of voters transiting. The charts do not only inform about relative shares of voters transiting out of the whole electorate of a given party or candidate but also about the share of this group of voters out of

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia 9 the whole population. The charts do not visualize transitions of non-voters because this segment of the population is always larger that the electorate of any single party or candidate. If they were included it would rescale the chart so much that the structure of voting transitions to or from the parties or candidates with very small support would not be visible.
Figure 1: Column totals of voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in Slovakia
Figure 2: Row totals of voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in Slovakia

10 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
Only some 44% of the electorate of Smer from the 2012 parliamentary elections actually supported
Rober Fico in the presidential elections. Almost one third failed to show up and the rest voted for other candidates, most o en for Radoslav Procházka. These 44% of former Smer voters were actually almost all of his voters in the first round of the presidential elections. It seems Robert Fico failed to a ract voters of any other party or non-voters from the parliamentary elections. Contrastingly, the electorate of
Andrej Kiska was very heterogeneous in terms of its previous electoral behaviour. He received support of a majority of former OĽ voters and a part of former Most-Híd, SDKÚ and SaS voters. Moreover, some
20% of his supporters did not vote in the parliamentary elections.
Most voters of KDH supported Radoslav Procházka, a former member of this party, while most voters of SDKÚ and SaS vored for Milan Kňažko. A large majorty of Most-Híd gained their votes to
Gyula Bárdos despite the fact that he was the official candidate of a different Hungarian party (SMK-
MKP). It is striking that many voters of small parties did not show up in the presidential elections. It would suggest there is a relatively large segment of the Slovak society that did not feel represented by any of the candidates. Fragmentation of votes among a large number of very small parties discourages me from disaggregating this residual category any further but it would be very interesting to find out which voters voted and which ones did not.
Tables 6–8 show the structure of voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections. Both Robert Fico and Andrej Kiska managed to successfully mobilize their supporters from the first round. Almost all of them showed up two weeks later and voted for the same candidate. Only a very small number of voters changed their preferences between the two rounds.
A vast majority of citizens that casted their votes in the first round also participated in the second.
This contributed to an increase in turnout from 43.4% in the first round to 50.5% in the second round.
A majority of Radoslav Procházka’s, Milan Kňažko’s and Gyula Bárdos‘ voters shi ed to Andrej Kiska.
Robert Fico only a racted a small number former voters of Radoslav Procházka and candidates that failed to exceed 5% support in the first round.
Both Robert Fico and Andrej Kiska were similarly successful in a racting non-voters from the first round. This group constituted 16% of Andrej Kiska’s voters and 22% of Robert Fico’s voters in the second round. While the electorate of Robert Fico remained relatively homogenous in terms of previous electoral behaviour, Andrej Kiska exhibited a more heterogeneous voter base in both rounds of the elections. Although he had fewer voters from the first round, he managed to win over a majority of the unsuccessful candidates’ electorate. So why Robert Fico failed to become the president despite the fact that his party won the last parliamentary elections by a landslide and have managed to keep most of its support since then? His defeat had several causes: Too many former voters of Smer did not support him in the first round of the presidential elections—they either did not vote at all or casted their votes for a different candidate. Robert Fico also failed to win over almost any other voter than the former supporters of Smer. This voter base was sufficient to win a lopsided victory in the first round but not enough to beat Andrej Kiska who was appealing for a much broader segment of the population.
Table 6: Voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in Slovakia (values lower than 1% are omitted)
Non-voters
Fico
Kiska
Procházka
Kňažko
Bárdos
Other
Non-voters Kiska Fico
48% 5% 5%
12%
1%
10%
6%
5%
2%
1%
2%
2%

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
Table 7: Voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in Slovakia—column totals (values lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters
Fico
Kiska
Procházka
Kňažko
Bárdos
Other
Total
Non-voters
96%
Kiska
16%
Fico
22%
56%
2%
1%
1%
35%
21%
18%
7%
3%
9%
1%
12%
100% 100% 100%
Table 8: Voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in Slovakia—row totals (values lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters Kiska
84% 8% Non-voters
Fico
Kiska
Procházka
Kňažko
Bárdos
Other
1%
11%
1%
13%
12%
99%
67%
94%
86%
22%
Fico Total
8% 100%
100% 100%
1% 100%
22% 100%
4% 100%
100%
66% 100%
11
Figure 3: Column totals of voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in Slovakia

12 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
Figure 4: Row totals of voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in Slovakia
Tables 9–14 and charts 5–8 show the structure of voting transitions between the 2010 parliamentary elections and the first round of the 2013 parliamentary elections and between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic. In the former case, there actually was a preelection survey conducted by MEDIAN (2013) and it is therefore possible to determine how closely the statistical model matches the survey. The value of the raw index of similarity is 84.4% and the value of the standardized index is 2.24 which is comparable to the models of voting transitions between various
Czech parliamentary elections presented in table 2 (see more details in Gregor 2014a).
Table 9: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic (values lower than 1% are omitted)
Non-voters
ČSSD
ODS
TOP 09
KSČM
VV
Other
Non-voters Zeman Schwarzenberg Fischer Dienstbier Other
31%
1%
2%
1%
1%
6%
1% 5%
8%
3%
2%
1%
1%
4%
1%
1%
3%
1%
3%
1%
2%
2%
1%
2%
1%
1%
2%
1%
2%
1%
1%
2%
4%
The electorate of TOP 09 appears to be the most stable in terms of voting transitions, followed by the electorate of ODS. Most of these parties’ voters transitioned to Karel Schwarzenberg. Voters of other parties were split much more evenly among a number of candidates. Most of ČSSD’s and KSČM’s voters shi ed to Miloš Zeman and most of VV’s voters to Jan Fischer. The electorate of Karel Schwarzenberg was therefore relatively very homogenous in the first round while Miloš Zeman was supported by a voter base that was much more fragmented in respect to their previous electoral behaviour.

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
Table 10: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic—column totals (values lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters
ČSSD
ODS
TOP 09
KSČM
VV
Other
Total
Non-voters Zeman Schwarzenberg Fischer Dienstbier Other
86%
2%
5%
2%
1%
2%
2%
8%
39%
7%
1%
17%
6%
22%
39%
58%
2%
25%
18%
13%
2%
9%
17%
16%
12%
40%
5%
5%
19%
10%
10%
16%
4%
18%
9%
6%
15%
32%
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
13
Table 11: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic—row totals (values lower than 1% are omittedalues lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters
ČSSD
ODS
TOP 09
KSČM
VV
Other
Non-voters Zeman Schwarzenberg Fischer Dienstbier Other
81%
5%
15%
5%
6%
12%
7%
3%
46%
8%
1%
40%
15%
30%
0%
0%
42%
75%
1%
3%
7%
15%
12%
2%
15%
29%
16%
3%
29%
4%
5%
27%
15%
8%
Total
5% 100%
4% 100%
20% 100%
11% 100%
12% 100%
29% 100%
36% 100%
Between the first and the second round, both candidates were similarly successful in mobilizing their voters from the first round. Unlike in Slovakia, the turnout actually dropped from 61.3% in the first round to 59.1% in the second round in the Czech Republic. Groups of Miloš Zeman’s and Karel
Schwarzenberg’s voters that did not participated in the second round were actually similarly sized.
Those who voted for the two candidates in the first round and showed up two weeks later almost always voted for the identical candidate. Both of the candidates were also almost equal in their ability to a ract voters who did not cast their votes in the first round.
Table 12: Voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic (values lower than 1% are omitted)
Non-voters
Zeman
Schwarzenberg
Fischer
Dienstbier
Other
Non-voters Zeman Schwarzenberg
30%
3%
2%
4%
3%
5%
3%
12%
5%
6%
3%
4%
11%
2%
1%
6%

14 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
Figure 5: Column totals of voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic
Figure 6: Row totals of voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
Table 13: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic—column totals (values lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters
Zeman
Schwarzenberg
Fischer
Dienstbier
Other
Total
Non-voters Zeman Schwarzenberg
64%
6%
4%
9%
6%
10%
11%
40%
17%
21%
11%
16%
1%
44%
10%
4%
25%
100% 100% 100%
15
Table 14: Voting transitions between the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic—row totals (values lower than 1% are omitted and values higher than 20% are in bold)
Non-voters
Zeman
Schwarzenberg
Fischer
Dienstbier
Other
Non-voters Zeman Schwarzenberg Total
81%
20%
15%
36%
28%
33%
9%
78%
0%
43%
62%
23%
11%
2%
85%
21%
11%
44%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
Comparing voters of the two most successful candidates from the first round and the rest of the candidates reveals that the former group more o en did not participated in the second round. Most former voters of Jan Fischer and Jiří Dienstbier supported Miloš Zeman while most former voters of those candidates that failed to receive more than 5% of the vote in the first round supported Karel
Schwarzenberg. Both candidates actually brought similarly sized voter bases to the second round, as well as similarly sized groups that did not vote in the first round. Miloš Zeman managed to win because he was more appealing to voters of unsuccessful candidates, particularly of Jan Fischer and Jiří
Dienstbier.
There are striking parallels in the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections the
Czech Republic and Slovakia. In both countries, it was the official candidate of a government party that ended up defeated. The winner was a candidate not directly connected to any major party. Robert
Fico and Karel Schwarzenberg were handicapped in the the first round because not even all voters of their party supported them. Some of these former voters of Smer and TOP 09 either defected to other candidates or did not participate in the first round at all. This was combined with the fact that both candidates were not very successful with appealing to voters of other parties from the last parliamentary elections. Voter base of Robert Fico was comprised almost entirely of former Smer’s voters while Karel
Schwarzenberg only partially won over former supporters of ODS. In both cases, the loosing candidate exhibited an unusually homogenous electorate in the first round. Quite contrary, Andrej Kiska and
Miloš Zeman were elected by a much more fragmented group of voters in terms of their previous electoral behaviour.

16 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
Figure 7: Column totals of voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic
Figure 8: Row totals of voting transitions between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia 17
Very similar is also the structure of voting transitions between the first and the second rounds. In the Czech Republic as well as in Slovakia, the two candidates qualified to enter the second round of the elections were comparably successful in a racting their voters from the first round. In both countries, only a very small number of citizens that cased their voters for the two candidates changed their preference between the two rounds. What was also similar is the share of the electorate that supported the two candidates in the first round but did not voted in the second. Andrej Kiska, Miloš Zeman, Robert
Fico and Karel Schwarzenberg were also about equally matched in terms of their ability to a ract nonvoters from the first round. These circumstances combined with relatively very evenly matched results of the first round caused all four candidates to bring similarly sized shares of their voters to the second round. The winner was very much determined by his appeal to supporters of unsuccessful candidates in both countries. A vast majority of these voters casted their votes again and supported the winner.
Is political science equipped with theories that could explain these striking similarities in the structure of voting transitions? Particularly transitions between the two rounds of the presidential elections could be interpreted using the theory of second order elections. The theory postulates, among other things, that new, non-parliamentarian and protest parties tend to be more successful in second order elections, particularly if they are not held simultaneously with first order elections. Voters feel that there is “less at stake” and do not strategize so much around their votes being wasted. Government parties tend to lose support because many voters “punish” them for unsatisfactory political performance
(Reif and Schmi 1980). If we apply this theory to the runoff majoritarian electoral system used in the presidential elections, we could say that Robert Fico who had been the prime minister for two years during the elections and Karel Schwarzenberg who had been the minister of foreign affairs for two and half years during the elections were not able to a ract sufficient voters due to their close ties with the government. The winners were not connected to any major party.
Some experts and journalists, such as Jiří Pehe (2014), Michal Horský (2014) or Kateřina Kňapová
(2014), were quick to put the Slovak presidential elections into broader context of a long-term trend of “deidentification” of politics characterized by voters shi ing towards new types of political parties.
These types are labelled differently in various taxonomies and typologies of political parties but share similar defining features. For example, they are called the electoral-professional party by Angelo
Panebianco (1988), the business firm model party by Johnatan Hopkin a Caterina Paolucci (1999) or the market-oriented party by Jennifer Lees-Marshment (2001). These parties are characterized by private funding, a strong position of their leaders (usually successful businessmen), centralized organizational structure and corporate-style management, marginalization of the rank-and-file, unstable voter base, flexible ideological profile bordering political de-identification strongly exhibited by verbally rejecting the concept of le -right political dimension and intensive use of modern technologies, communication strategies and methods of political marketing not only to communicate but primarily to dra political manifestos. This ideal type is approximated the most by VV and ANO in the Czech Republic and by
SaS and OĽ in Slovakia.
Proponents of this “deidentification” hypothesis argue that the winning candidates exhibit some features of this new type of parties and that the presidential elections in both countries lend further evidence for a growing electoral support of a new conceptual framework of politics that is less grounded in rigid organizational structures, representation of a well-defined segment of society and stable ideological profile derived from great authors of political philosophy and that is more grounded in electoral volatility, ideological vagueness and fluidity and concepts of “a-politics”, “non-politics” or
“anti-politics “.
These two lines of reasoning are to a large extend competing hypothesis. The theory of second order elections is implicitly based on the assumption that the “traditional” types of political parties prevail.
If it is not the case there is no reason to expect cyclic shi s of electoral support between government and opposition parties and between established and new parties. The new types of parties described above bring about an era of overall electoral instability. Both hypotheses could be tested using a larger sample of second order elections. If the later hypothesis is valid we should observe a structure of voting transitions similar to those presented in this article in elections that are hold simultaneously with first order elections.

18 European Electoral Studies, Vol. 9 (2014), No. 1, pp. 3–20
The hypotheses could be tested using a larger sample of second order elections (not necessarily exclusively presidential elections). If the structure of voting transitions corresponds with observation predicted by the theory of second order elections this theory is a sufficient, more parsimonious explanation. An even stronger test would be performed if the second order elections in the sample were held during various phases of the parliamentary term and observations were consistent with a cyclic trend of electoral shi s between government and opposition and new and old parties across countries as it is predicted by the theory. Erratic pa ers of voting transitions would lend evidence of the “deidentification” hypothesis, especially if successful parties and candidates exhibited features of the new types.
The aim of this article was to explore similarities in the structure of voting transitions between the last parliamentary elections and the recent presidential elections and between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The structure of voting transitions was estimated using the hierarchical Bayesian model of ecological inference applied to a dataset of electoral results on the municipal level. For Slovakia, transitions around the 2012 parliamentary and
2014 presidential elections were estimated and for the Czech Republic, transitions around the 2010 parliamentary and the 2013 presidential elections were estimated.
Analysis of the voting transitions reveals that both presidential elections bear striking resemblance in many ways. Robert Fico and Karel Schwarzenberg that were defeated in the second round were nominated by relatively successful government parties. Both candidates were high ranking members of the cabinet while their opponents Andrej Kiska and Miloš Zeman were not directly connected to any large party. In both countries, the difference of electoral support between the two most successful candidates was not high in the first round while in the second round, it was much higher. Voters were also relatively highly fragmented among a large number of candidates in both countries. Robert Fico and Karel Schwarzenberg were not supported by all voters of their party in the first round. This was combined with the fact that both candidates were not very successful with appealing to voters of other parties from the last parliamentary elections. In both cases, the loosing candidate exhibited an unusually homogenous electorate in the first round. Winning candidates Andrej Kiska and Miloš Zeman were elected by a much more fragmented group of voters in terms of their previous electoral behaviour.
In both countries, the two candidates qualified to enter the second round were similarly successful in a racting their voters from the first round. Moreover, only a very small number of voters that voted for the two candidates changed their preference between the two rounds. What was also similar was a share of the electorate that supported the two candidates in the first round but did not voted in the second.
Andrej Kiska, Miloš Zeman, Robert Fico and Karel Schwarzenberg were relatively equally matched in terms of their ability to a ract non-voters from the first round. These circumstances combined with relatively very evenly matched results of the first round caused all four candidates to bring a relatively similarly sized share of their voters to the second round. The winner was very much determined by his appeal to supporters of unsuccessful candidates. In both countries, a vast majority of these voters casted their votes again.
Observed similarities could be accounted for by the theory of second order elections since both loosing candidates were members of the cabinet. Robert Fico who had been the prime minister for two years during the elections and Karel Schwarzenberg who had been the minister of foreign affairs for two and half years during the elections were not able to a ract sufficient voters due to their close ties with the government. The winners were not directly connected to any major party. The theory of second order elections postulates that government parties tend to lose support in these elections. Some experts and journalists interpret the results in context of a long-term shi of voters to a new type of political parties characterized by organizational flexibility, ideological vagueness and electoral fluidity.
The winning candidates supposedly exhibit a ributes of these parties and the presidential elections lend evidence for a hypothesis of an ongoing “deidentification” of politics. These two interpretations are functionally competing hypotheses that could be tested using a larger dataset of voting transitions around presidential elections.

Gregor, K.
Comparing the structure of voting transitions around the presidential elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia 19
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