Analysis of Support for Extreme Political Parties in the Czech Republic Using Spatial Econometric Techniques

This bachelor thesis focuses on the analysis of regional support for selected political parties and movements in the Czech Republic using spatial econometric methods. The analysis includes Freedom and Direct Democracy, Stačilo!, Motorists for Themselves and the Czech Pirate Party. The aim of the thesis is to identify socioeconomic, demographic and geographical factors associated with their electoral support and to assess whether spatial models are better able to capture the territorial structure of electoral results than a classical linear model. The analysis is conducted at the level of administrative districts of municipalities with extended competence. First, baseline OLS models are estimated, followed by tests of spatial autocorrelation in the residuals. Spatial models are then specified and estimated, especially the spatial Durbin model. The results show that electoral support for the selected parties and movements is not randomly distributed in space, but exhibits clear regional patterns. Education structure, social deprivation, demographic composition and the character of settlement structure play a particularly important role. Spatial models also make it possible to better capture territorial relationships that would remain partly omitted when using classical regression.