The Slovak Extreme Right and its Support According to Local Presence of Roma

Abstract

With the restore of party plurality in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, the far right was able to emerge and operate in this region. Due to a lack of immigrants in these countries, the far right parties found domestic ethnic minorities a proper scapegoat to win votes. This article analyzes the support of the main extreme right party in Slovakia, the LSNS in general election in 2012. Our study of the party’s electoral results focuses on the local level and brings substantial findings of the case. Our findings indicate that the areas with a moderate share of Roma among the population are the breeding grounds for the support of the party. We also discovered that LSNS scored better in areas with the Roma population concentrated in settlements outside of municipalities. In accordance with previous theory, the party’s results also were better in localities with higher unemployment and lower overall levels of education.