Geography of the “Combination Effect”

Anotace: The big issue for democratic societies is to get as many people as possible to vote. Low voter turnout is particularly typical of second-order elections. There are several ways to increase voter turnout. One way is to hold several elections on the same day, as happened in 2022 in Slovakia. Regional and municipal elections were held on the same day, and the question arises of how this combination changed the voter turnout in the Slovak regional elections. This paper aims to conduct a geographical analysis of regional elections in Slovakia in 2017 and 2022. Based on this analysis, it answers whether there has been an increase in voter turnout as an effect of holding elections simultaneously, and it identifies types of municipalities where this increase has occurred. The analysis employs methods of spatial analysis (Moran's I criterion, the univariate and bivariate local indicator of spatial autocorrelation). The results show that the most significant increase in voter turnout occurred in the municipalities where there was the most significant difference in turnout between the 2017 regional elections and the 2018 municipal elections. The results also show that the 2022 regional elections resemble more closely the 2018 and 2022 municipal elections regarding the spatial distribution of voter turnout. Thus, the analyses confirm that the increase in turnout in the 2022 regional elections was also due to the combination of these elections with the municipal elections. However, it should also be noted that this increase is spatially differentiated, which gives room for further geographical analyses.