INFLUENCE OF SELECTED ECONOMIC INDICATORS ON SUPPORT FOR POLITICAL PARTIES

The main goal of the paper is to identify statistical relations between selected economic indicators and political party preferences. The sample contains 7 political parties, and we monitor the development of their preferences through two agencies (FOCUS and AKO) conducting regular surveys of electoral preferences. We monitor their dependence relation through a set of selected key economic indicators: Average monthly wages, GDP index, GDP in millions of EUR, Unemployment in %, Unemployment in thousands, Consumer prices and Inflation. The observed period covers a total of 52 months from the beginning of the year 2016 to April 2020. The results show a statistical dependence between specific economic indicators and the development of preferences of political parties that were active in the government from March 2016 to March 2020. The form of dependence shows itself as indirect, which means a positive balance development of economic indicators, but on the contrary, a negative development of electoral preferences of Smer-SD, SNS and Most-Hid political parties.