Who is mobilized by the presidential election?

Abstract

The concept of representative democracy presupposes the participation of active citizens. A significant drop in the interest and trust of citizens was observed with the onset of the new millennium, not only in voter turnout. However, the Czech president traditionally enjoys quite high support from citizens and leads (except for a few fluctuations) in surveys ranking their trust in politicians. This corresponds to the high interest of voters in participating in the presidential elections, which has gradually increased and, in the last presidential election (2023) in the second round, reached the third-highest level in the history of the independent Czech Republic. The regression analysis results confirm that participation in elections is mainly determined by previous participation; however, a highly personalized election with significant media coverage can also mobilize different types of voters than the general election. Factors of social exclusion such as the rate of distraints and the rate of unemployment retain their negative influence on voter turnout even in the presidential election.