Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series

Title:
Influence of social and religious factors in Polish Sejm elections, 2001-2007

Authors

Elżbieta Bilska-Wodecka - Jagiellonian University, Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Gronostajowa 7, 30-387 Kraków; phone: +48 12 664 52 86; e-mail: elzbieta.bilska-wodecka@uj.edu.pl

Roman Matykowski - Adam Mickiewicz University, Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Spatial Management, Dzięgielowa 27, 61-680 Poznań; phone: +48 61 829 61 70; e-mail: mat@amu.edu.pl

Keywords
Poland, Sejm elections, social factors, religious factors, principal component analysis

Abstract
The analysis presented herein addresses the issue of social and religious diversity within the Catholic Church and its influence on voter turnout and Sejm election results in Poland. The paper covers election results from 2001 to 2007. Both organizational-institutional characteristics and social-religious characteristics of the Church have been taken into account when assessing the impact of the Church on regional differences in political support for selected political factions in 2005. The impact of each factor on the support level for a given party or political orientation in a regional (spatial) context was assessed on the basis of the degree of coincidence of the factors of interest, measured using the coefficient of correlation.

Pages:
7-22

DOI:
10.1515/bog-2015-0031

BGSS No. 30 (2015)