Dijete u vremenu: dob i biračko ponašanje u Hrvatskoj

Abstract

The article analyzes the relation between age and voter behavior in Croatia on the basis of a field survey conducted after the 2019/2020 presidential election and before the 2020 parliamentary election. The article is situated at the intersection of research traditions of youth sociology and social cleavages analysis and voter behavior studies. This study uses an ordinal logistic regression model to test the relation between predictors stemming from the dimensions of religion and ethics, history, parties, values, trust, and socioeconomic status, and age groups. The conducted analysis shows that there is a congruence of predictive models for parliamentary and presidential elections. Further, the study shows that voter behavior in Croatia is largely clustered in two age groups, one composed of Millenials and Generation X, and the other one by Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation. The younger group is characterized by lower levels of authoritarian values, lower trust in traditional media, and lower trust in government efficacy. Family heritage of the Partisan Movement is the single most significant variable, which significantly increases with age. In the case of religious education in schools, one can observe a socialization effect, whereby younger age groups accept it more than older groups, although there are no significant differences considering the religiosity predictor between age groups. Besides this, no statistically significant differences between cohorts on the liberal-conservative scale could be determined. In conclusion, one can say that this paper shows a certain glimpse of a generation gap in voter behavior, especially considering the main social cleavage in Croatia, rooted historical and identity differences, which significantly fades away among younger generations.