Głosowanie podzielone w wyborach Prezydenta oraz Rady Miasta Krakowa w dniu 7 kwietnia 2024 roku

SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN THE ELECTIONS OF THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF KRAKÓW AND THE KRAKÓW CITY COUNCIL ON 7 APRIL 2024This article analyses the phenomenon of split-ticket voting in the municipal elections held in Kraków on 7 April 2024. Split-ticket voting is supporting candidates of different political parties in a single election. It is a common phenomenon in electoral systems that allows voters to express a preference for more than one candidate or party and is an important aspect of voting behaviour. Although this phenomenon has been the subject of numerous studies in the context of parliamentary and presidential elections, research on split-ticket voting at the local government level, characterised by specific dynamics of local conditions, remains relatively limited, thus creating a research gap in the subject of the study, which further justifies the undertaking of the present topic. Therefore, the study’s objectives were to determine the scale of split-ticket voting, identify electorates prone to split their votes and present the spatial differentiation of this phenomenon in the context of local self-government elections in Kraków. The analyses were based on data from the National Election Commission (PKW) covering the results of voting for lists of candidates to the Kraków City Council and candidates for the position of Mayor. This data allowed analyses in various spatial arrangements, from the entire city level to Kraków’s districts, constituencies, and individual polling wards. The results of the research indicate that in the first round of the local self-government elections in Krakow, 71,403 voters (24.8% of those voting for the lists of committees with presidential candidates) split their votes by supporting the candidate for Mayor and the list of candidates for city councillors registered by two different electoral committees. Including voters supporting lists of councillor candidates registered by committees without presidential candidates, this percentage rises to 27% (79,975 voters). The largest group of “vote splitters” were voters who supported Łukasz Gibała in the presidential election without voting for the associated city council list (73%). The research also showed spatial variation in split-ticket voting at different levels. At the district level, the highest level of split voting occurred in District XVII (over 43%) and the lowest in District VI (16.7%). The highest percentage of voters who split their votes between the presidential candidates and the lists of councillor candidates proposed by the two electoral committees was recorded in constituency no. 7 (36%) and the lowest in constituencies no. 3 and no. 4 (21% and 20% respectively). Analysing the ward-level results reveals a correlation between the increase in the share of split votes and increasing distance from the city centre, especially towards the eastern boundaries of Kraków.