Slovakia gay marriage/adoption/sex education referendum - Feb. 7, 2015

[politicus]

At 50.5% counted

Q1: 94,1% Yes 4,6% No
Q2: 92,1% Yes 6,0% No
Q3: 89,6% Yes 8,0% No

Turnout 19,3% so far.

[politicus]

19,95% turnout at 64,2% counted.

Q1: 94,2%
Q2: 92,1%
Q3: 89,8%

[politicus]

20,7% turnout at 75,9% counted.

Q1: 94,4%
Q2: 92,3%
Q3: 90,1%

[politicus]

21,3% turnout at 94,1% counted.

Q1: 94,5%
Q2: 92,4%
Q3: 90,3%

[politicus]

Very successful boycott. Anything below 30% was considered a humiliation of Alliance for Family and the church.

Only 4,1% voted No to Q1 (gay marriage ban), so near total boycott from the No side.

[politicus]

99,8% counted. Still 21,3% turnout.

Q1: 94,5% Yes  4,1% No
Q2: 92,4% Yes  5,5% No
Q3: 90,3% Yes  7,3% No

[Boston Bread]

It looks like the no side did their part in not showing up. This is the one election where I'm happy for low turnout. With only 21-22% turnout it makes me think the "no" side might be larger than what was originally thought.

[politicus]

Anton Chromík from Alliance for Family says they'll cook free goulash for towns with above 50% voter turnout.

LOL

[politicus]

Turnout was highest at 32,3% in Presov region and lowest in Banská Bystrica with 15,8%. Bratislava was 16,9%.



The eight regions:


Prešov 32,3%

Žilina 29,9%

Trenčín 21,8%
   
Košice 19,1%

Bratislava 16,9%

Trnava 16,7%
   
Nitra 16,7%

Banská Bystrica 15,8%


Very clear divide between the socially conservative north and more liberal south.


National turnout was 21,41%. My turnout prognosis of "around 25%" was not far off, but a bit too high.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Smer should immediately legalise to annoy the right.

[Hifly]

Smer should immediately legalise to annoy the right.

And piss off their own voters? What?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I hate Slovakian democracy so I don't care

[Tender Branson]

What a meaningless referendum.

The only thing we know now is that 20% of Slovak voters oppose gay marriage and 1% supports it.

And it changes nothing anyway, because the Slovak constitution already bans gay marriage and adoption.

If we take into account the pre-election polls, 85% of all Slovaks oppose gay marriage - which means a long, long time is still necessary to evolve on this issue.

[politicus]

What a meaningless referendum.

The only thing we know now is that 20% of Slovak voters oppose gay marriage and 1% supports it.

And it changes nothing anyway, because the Slovak constitution already bans gay marriage and adoption.

If we take into account the pre-election polls, 85% of all Slovaks oppose gay marriage - which means a long, long time is still necessary to evolve on this issue.

If we try looking for a bit of meaning in this anyway:

- This was a big blow to the Slovak SoCons and the Catholic church, that invested significant resources and prestige in the referendum.

- People are annoyed by the right wing wasting 6,3M € on a pointless exercise (hardly anyone thought they could get 50% and going for a "moral victory" in a 40%+ referendum was always a dubious goal).

- It did show that ordinary folks are not homophobic enough to want to stick it to the gays. As one gay rights activist leader put it "It shows Slovaks are not afraid of gay marriage". There is no doubt that the boycott campaign actually worked, so in that sense it is a moral victory for the LGBT community - they also got the state channels to refuse homophobic adds, which sets a precedent.

I would still put Slovakia in the second wave/round category regarding gay marriage in Eastern Europe. There is a majority among under 35s that supports it and the poll did not ask about civil unions, which is a necessary first step in Eastern Europe (even Estonia went civil union first). It is also a country where left populism trumps right wing populism, which will make things easier down the road + gay marriage in the Czech Republic could push things fast. The Catholic church has "Polish strength" in the north, but not in the south and west.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What is the origin of this North/South divide? I'm curious.

[EPG]

I would focus attention on the two most northerly and mountainous regions, Žilina and Prešov; as justification, turnout elsewhere was within a narrow band from 15 to 22 per cent. These two regions are on the Polish border and are the heartland of the (Catholic) Christian democrats. There are hardly any Hungarians here, so politics in this part of Slovakia tends to be less about Slovaks v. Hungarians than the rest of the country, and the salience of "European-normal" political issues is consequently higher. Conversely, the religious minorities are relatively numerous, so perhaps that informs a greater political expression of Catholicism among the majority of the population, as manifested in the strong vote for KDH. Also, these regions are more rural than the rest of Slovakia (except Banská Bystrica) and turnout tends to be high.

[politicus]

What is the origin of this North/South divide? I'm curious.

It is pretty strong. See one of the most crucial elections in modern Slovakia Merciar vs. Social Liberal Rudolf Schuster in 1999:



Apart from the north (and that incl. NE Trecin) being more rural and mountainous (= insular), you can point to the effect of the counterreformation. Lutheranism spread into Slovakia from German speaking towns in Carpathia and was much stronger in the north where the peasants became involved, a Slovakianized version of Czech was used for services and the whole thing got a national dimension. In the south it was mainly Hungarian magnates, gentry and townies that became Calvinist. This was much easier to repres for the Catholic church, whereas forceful (literally) counterreformation led to a more militant and rigorous form of Catholicism in the north.

In the 1867-1914 era the Slovak National Party was russophile, traditionalist and anti-Western/anti-Protestant and dominated in the north and centre, later supplemented by the more homespun and (even more) Catholic Slovak Peoples Party, whereas pro-Czech/Western Social Democrats and (to a lesser degree) Liberals where more successful in the South. The idea of a Slovak nation connected westwards either as an autonomous part of Czechoslovakia or as an independent nation was strong in the south, whereas a Slavophile, insular and traditionalist version dominated in the north. Under WW2 the Tiso regime had its support in the north and center, whereas the Slovak National Insurgency in 1944 started in the south (Banská Bystrica). Despite rapid social changes under Communism (collectivization, urbanization, industrialization etc.) the old patterns resurfaced after the Velvet Revolution and got stronger after independence.

[Türkisblau]

I learned a lot more about Slovakia today than I thought I would. Great post, politicus.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I learned a lot more about Slovakia today than I thought I would. Great post, politicus.

[EPG]

Slovakia has an unusually multi-polar political system for Central Europe, reflecting its multi-faceted society at the crossroads of Europe. Here is a really intriguing map of a low-turnout election, the 2014 European Parliament election, which shows what lies beneath the SMER hegemony.


Observe that the southern districts are dominated by the pro-Hungarian parties, Most-Híd (Bridge) and the SMK/MKP (Hungarian Community Party). The most important political cleavages vary through the country and have not been stable through time, but are now essentially based on ethnicity in the south and religious-fervour in the north. When the liberal-conservatives of SDKÚ-DS were stronger, you would have seen them do well in urban centres around Bratislava.

SMER and (to a much greater extent) the Christian Democrats get a much bigger share of the Slovak-party vote in the rural north where Slovaks are more numerous. The converse is true of the area near the Carpathian basin, where the more secular conservatives and liberals do well.

[SNJ1985]

Smer should immediately legalise to annoy the right.

If they were to do such a thing; the Slovak people should respond by voting in a huge right-wing government in the next election, which would then reverse the move.

[MalaspinaGold]

Smer should immediately legalise to annoy the right.

If they were to do such a thing; the Slovak people should respond by voting in a huge right-wing government in the next election, which would then reverse the move.

Yes, all 21% of them.

[politicus]

@EPG: I am not sure whether your post was a reply to what I wrote, but a few comments:

1. Only KDH (SoCons) and the SNS (far right) were really active in the referendum campaign, while the other parties preferred to stay away from the unpopular referendum, so most of the general socioeconomic and ethnic cleavages were not really activated.

2. There are no systematic differences between Hungarians and southern Slovaks on social issues, so the ethnic cleavage is a moot point in this context.

3. Slovaks are 81% of the population and Hungarians are just 8.5% (Romas likely 8-9%, but officially 2% with most being labeled other). This makes your "where Slovaks are more numerous" phrase seem a bit odd. Slovaks are the vast majority in most of the country.



(Rusyns are Ruthenians who do not identify as Ukrainians)

4. This is more a qualifier than a critique, but Most-Hid has almost 40% Slovak members and attract a bi-ethnic electorate. It is not a traditional "Hungarians only" minority party, but an attempt to "bridge" the ethnic gap (name means bridge in both languages). There are also quite a few Hungarian-Slovak families. You say pro-Hungarian, but I think anti-discrimination and pro-biculturalism would be fairer.

5. I think it fairly obvious that the historical north-south division on religion and social issues is alive and well. The strong showing for KDH in the north on your map underlines that.

[EPG]

@EPG: I am sure whether your post was a reply to what I wrote, but a few comments:

It's all part of an ongoing conversation; agreement and disagreement are overrated on the internet. The best summary is that I am probably agreeing with you, but there is more to Slovakia, too, for those interested in why there is a north-south divide.

So there are several sub-regional districts ("okres") where the pro-Hungarian parties get a majority. This is what I mean by places where Slovaks are relatively numerous: places where we can't just look at the SMER or KDH vote alone, because so few ethnic Hungarians support them. The secular econ-lib parties do better among the Slovak parties in those districts and Catholics/left-nationalists do worse. I think that agrees with your thesis of the north-south social divide, though I don't know if it quite proves that there are no systemic differences between the two groups in those regions, but it doesn't matter either way.

And, of course even in areas with few Hungarians, the Hungarian question informs Slovak nationalism more than relations with any other country (even the Czechs!), and this is naturally more salient near Hungary. It is the classic pattern wherein ethnic fears are strong among communities who are unfamiliar with the perceived threat but feel they are proximate to it, as opposed to being either in the milieu or distant.

As for Most-Híd, they are like Alliance in the north of Ireland. Their bicommunalism in ideology and personnel belies the fact that most of their voters are from one community.

Year	Pre-SMK/MKP	SMK/MKP	Most-Híd	Total vote (%)
1990	9			10
1992	10			10
1994		10		10
1998		9		9
2004		11		11
2006		12		12
2010		4	8	12
2012		4	7	11