Information in amalgamated municipalities: How political knowledge about the local government composition differs between centre and periphery

In this paper, we are interested whether voters are able to distinguish parties in government from the parties in opposition, and how this ability differs for inhabitants of different parts of amalgamated municipalities. We expect, that due the amalgamation makes travelling of information more complicated, and especially in central area where municipal council is seating, the information about local politics may be “cheaper” then on outskirts. To test this expectation, we use the original data from the exit-poll conducted during the 2022 Czech local elections in 35 local municipalities. In the questionnaire, we asked the question about composition of municipal coalitions. Respondents got the list of nine parties and were asked to mark weather the given party is a part of local government or not. We suppose that the ability of correct classification is a result of factor at both, individual and the municipal level. Besides the centre-periphery, we will control for education, interest in politics and political efficacy on individual level and for size, complexity of party systems, and composition of local government on municipal level. The empirical test will be conducted on data from exit-poll about municipalities with municipal board. Therefore, we analyse data about 7000 respondents in 35 municipalities. Multilevel binary logistic regression will be employed as method of the analysis. Finally, we will contrast the situation on local level to situation at the national (and regional) level, because for one of the municipalities (city Brno), we have the data available also for elections on other levels.