Electoral Atlas of Poland

With the transition from communist system to a parliamentary democracy, some fields of science, plotted for fifty years in the Polish Peoples Republic, could again be found belonging to them. One of them is the spatial differentiation of voting behavior, known as the electoral geography. After 1989, on the one hand the results of subsequent votes of the presidential, parliamentary or local governments are faced with special attention to the public opinion. Moment of their presentation in the so-called. Election nights collect a very large audience. On the other comments and analysis are random and fleeting. Sometimes there are even the erroneous theses that fall from the lips of commentators focused enough on this topic. The latter is perhaps the result of a small amount available in the market depth, comprehensive analysis. Also looks much better situation with universal access to statistical and cartographic documentation of subsequent votes. "Dry" the data made available by the National Electoral Commission (National Election Office) is devoid of comparative advantages and includes only the period after 2001.

There is therefore a need to allow "sustainable footprint" in the form of elaboration, showing the current knowledge of the geographic, sociological and political science and in an accessible way imaging electoral behavior of Poles over the past twenty two years. The project would be implemented under the auspices of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization. For the essential part of project will be responsible specialists (political scientists, geographers, sociologists) involved in electoral geography for years, and having a strong achievements in this field

The overarching strategic objective of the project is to establish the main nationwide electoral platform for research, focusing primarily on their spatial and sociological aspects. Electoral Atlas of Poland will be a permanent intention of documenting and explaining the next Polish elections (parliamentary, presidential, government, referendum).

The specific objectives were as follows: cognitive, methodological, practical (utilitarian). Electoral Atlas of Poland will consist of the following components:

• introduction and detailed description of aims, objectives and research methods,
• political background and social mood including the measurement of sociometric,
• comparing the results with the results of the election polls,
• the results of parliamentary and presidential elections, referendums, the European Parliament elections based on a mapping analysis, historical-cultural factors, and socio-economic,
• compare and contrast the presentation of fixed and variable elements of the electoral geography of electoral activities (voter turnout) and the electorates of party groups (post-communism-axis post-Solidarity, the left-right-wing, liberalism-solidarity),
• analysis of the functional areas, national minorities, religious and the regional groups,
• fixed and variable elements of the electoral behavior of Poles,
• a list of representative municipalities (convergence of the results of the vote nation-wide), allowing to answer the question whether we have in Poland the municipality / municipal identifiable as "Polish election in a nutshell".