The Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) has released a new publication Európske voľby 2019 na Slovensku: výsledky a súvislosti [European Elections 2019 in Slovakia: Results and Contexts]. The book was supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
Authors of the book – sociologist Oľga Gyárfášová, political scientist Grigorij Mesežnikov and sociologist Jozef Zagrapan - map the course of the European elections 2019, evaluate their results and analyze important socio-political contexts of voting of Slovak citizens.
The subject of the experts' research includes the activities of political parties (creation and presentation of programmatic background, including representation of the European agenda and the approach of individual parties to the issues of European integration and common European policies, electoral campaign, mobilization activities and results achieved). They analyze the dynamics of public opinion on issues related to the voter turnout, to attitude to the EU, opinions on European integration, support of Slovakia's membership in the EU, confidence in the EU institutions – all attitudes that play an important role in the electoral behavior of citizens as well as in the overall set up of the population in political and civic participation. They also evaluate the results of voting of Slovak citizens in the regional, residential and socio-economic contexts.
The analysis provides the readers the framework for better understanding of the results of the parties in the competition for representation in the European Parliament, such as the size of the settlement, the level of development of the district or the ethnic composition of the municipality. The book examines the motivations that led Slovak citizens to participation or abstention in elections. Political parties in the book are divided into 5 categories – Euro-optimists, Euro-realists, Euro-opportunists, Euro-pessimists and Euro-sceptics/Euro-opponents.
The book Európske voľby 2019 na Slovensku: výsledky a súvislosti [European Elections 2019 in Slovakia: Results and Contexts] is the only publication of this kind issued in the Slovak Republic to date that is the main reference analytical source on the results of the 2019 European elections in Slovakia.