In the elections, voters choose their representatives from the offered political parties and candidates. What are voters trying to achieve when they cast their ballots? On the one hand, to express their opinions and preferences, but on the other hand also to influence the election outcome. If the second mentioned motivation prevails, we speak of tactical (or strategic) voting. Because of tactical voting, people do not always vote for their most preferred party, which unnaturally favors some political parties at the expense of others. From this point of view, tactical voting contributes to inequality in representation. Based on a questionnaire survey on a representative sample of the Czech adult population (N=1,826), it was found that the share of tactical voting reached 15% in the analysed 2021 Czech parliamentary elections. Many voters felt a strong aversion to the ANO political party and its leader Andrej Babiš, thus they often decided to vote for SPOLU, the party that had the best chance of defeating him, even if this party was not really close to them. Therefore, tactical voting significantly influenced the election results, including the impact on the overall winner. Voters were also influenced by pre-election polls and chose only from viable parties that were expected to exceed the 5% electoral threshold. If the voter decided not to support his most preferred party, whose chances of success were very small, and instead voted for one of the strong parties in order not to waste his vote, it was another common type of tactical voting. According to the binary logistic regression model, tactical voters are more likely to be younger and more educated people. These socio-demographic differences partly determine the spatial patterns in the use of tactical voting which is more frequent, for example, in suburban areas in the hinterland of large cities.

Radek Pileček
Department of Social Geography and Regional Development, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague

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ID Abstract: 278