From Kilometres to Alienation: Examining electoral accountability in amalgamated municipalities

Dataset comes from an exit poll survey from the 2022 local elections in the Czech Republic. The data from voters were obtained after they left the polling stations. The survey was conducted in 53 non-randomly selected municipalities. The selection process aimed to maximize variance. Voters that took part in the survey were selected randomly. Data are subset limited to amalgamated municipalities. Data collection was done in centres and peripheries of such municipalities. The respondents living in the central part of the municipality were coded in the analysis as 1, while respondents residing in the peripheral parts were coded as 0. Furthermore, the data include information about the distance between the respondent’s unit of residence and the centre. The distance is measured as the shortest distance on a public road between the intravillan of the centre and the intravillan of the unit since such a measure is the closest to the assumed mechanism of the physical barrier.

All the voters that participated in the survey were asked various questions regarding their electoral behaviour, their state of knowledge about local politics, their evaluations of the performance of the board of councillors or municipal council, and various sociodemographic questions. Voting for the incumbent is coded 1 when a respondent chose a political subject that was on the board of councillors in the past electoral term, or when they selected a candidate from a political subject.
Additionally, dataset covers several control variables - perceived performance of incumbents related to the voter’s most salient issue, mostly the management of the municipality. Original 5 point scale is recoded into a dichotomous variable, where 1 indicated a positive voter assessment (original values 1 and 2) and 0 a not positive assessment (3, 4, 5).
Secondly, there is support for the political party in the 2021 parliamentary elections, the most important elections in the Czech Republic. controlling whether respondents who voted for an incumbent voted for the same party in the last parliamentary elections. Third, location of the candidates for local government office is included to capture whether they were from the same part of the municipality (centre or periphery) as the respondent. Respondents’ level of trust in the board of councillors (incumbents) is also included in the data as well as sociodemographic controls (age, education, gender) .

本数据集源于捷克共和国2022年地方选举的出口民调调查。选民数据收集于他们离开投票站之后。调查在53个非随机选择的市政单位进行。选取过程旨在最大化方差。参与调查的选民通过随机选择产生。数据子集限于合并市政单位。数据收集在市政单位的中心和边缘地区进行。分析中将居住在市政单位中心地区的受访者编码为1，而居住在边缘地区的受访者编码为0。此外，数据还包括关于受访者住所与中心之间距离的信息。该距离以公共道路上中心地区内部村庄与住所内部村庄之间的最短距离来衡量，因为这种衡量方式最接近于假设的物理障碍机制。
所有参与调查的选民都被问及关于他们选举行为、对地方政治的了解程度、对议会委员会或市政委员会的绩效评估，以及各种社会经济问题的各种问题。当受访者选择过去选举周期中曾在议会委员会中的政治主体，或选择来自政治主体的候选人时，对现任候选人的投票编码为1。
此外，数据集涵盖了多个控制变量——与选民最关注问题相关的现任候选人的感知绩效，主要涉及市政管理。原始的5点量表被重新编码为二分变量，其中1表示积极的选民评估（原始值1和2），而0表示非积极的评估（3、4、5）。
其次，数据集包括2021年议会选举中对政治党的支持情况，这是捷克共和国最重要的选举。控制变量包括是否在议会选举中为现任候选人投票的受访者是否在上一届议会选举中为同一政党投票。第三，包括地方政府候选人的位置，以捕捉他们是否与受访者来自市政单位的同一部分（中心或边缘）。数据还包括受访者对议会委员会（现任候选人）的信任程度，以及社会经济控制变量（年龄、教育、性别）。