The rise of new populist political parties in Czech parliamentary elections between 2010 and 2017: the geography of party replacement

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the territorialization of party replacement in the Czech Republic between 2010 and 2017. Using spatial analytical techniques, we found that despite the significant success of new populist parties, which considerably transformed the parliamentary strength of individual parties, the “new” geographical patterning of party support was far from real transformation. Historically, most of the rightist and center-right parties relied on higher support in areas with a high development potential and the developmental axes related to them, whereas established left-wing parties found support in areas with a low development potential. The elections of 2010 and 2013 were exceptions to this pattern, but the elections of 2017 interrupted this deviation when geographical support for some of the new populist parties (those which had succeed in 2013 already) moved mostly to underdeveloped areas. However, as the programmatics of most of the new populist parties are relatively unclear (especially on the left-right ideological division), one can hardly speak of class realignment, but rather of spatial re-stratification of Czech politics: traditionally leftist and rightist voters largely abandoned “their” (established) parties, but on the other hand, their voting mostly did not contravene the Czech spatial division between leftist and rightist regions.