On Tuesday, November 3, the race for the next US president and vice president will come to a close. According to the latest polls, the battle will be decided between the incumbent Donald Trump and his vice president Mike Pence, or Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many US citizens including those living in the Czech Republic won’t miss their chance to choose the next president. For whom will those residing in the Czech Republic cast their vote?
Methodology
In order to find out how the US citizens living in the Czech Republic will vote, we decided to run a quantitative survey using a simple questionnaire that contains eight preferential and demographic questions.
Our goal was to get at least 100 completed valid questionnaires because the bigger the number of respondents is, the closer the results of the survey will be to the actual results of the presidential election. The size of the surveyed sample also affects the margin of error: the fewer completed valid questionnaires are collected, the bigger the margin of error will inevitably be. Or, as is stated in Wikipedia: “The larger the margin of error, the less confidence one should have that a poll result would reflect the result of a survey of the entire population.”
Unfortunately, we didn’t reach our goal as we only received 76 completed questionnaires out of which only 71 are valid. Considering that there were about 7 500 US citizens living in the Czech Republic as of December 31 2019 it means that only about 1% of them participated in the survey. Despite that, we still decided to write this article because even the small sample of respondents gave us some insight into how they’ll vote.
General Results
As stated in the previous paragraph, we received 76 completed questionnaires out of which 71 are valid.
Out of these 71 respondents:
- 65 (91.5%) will vote in this presidential election,
- 5 (7%) will not attend,
- 1 (1.5%) have not yet decided.
As for the individual candidates, 50 (77%) respondents will vote for Joe Biden (Democratic Party), 13 (20%) will vote for Donald Trump (Republican Party), 1 (1.5%) will vote for Jo Jorgensen (Libertarians) and 0 respondents will vote for Howie Hawkins (Greens). Out of the 65 people who will vote, 1 (1.5%) are still undecided who they’ll vote for, though this person stressed she will not vote for Donald Trump. This number of undecided respondents who will vote naturally doesn’t include the one respondent who stated that they are not yet sure they’ll participate in this election at all. Besides this, some of the people who are not going to vote stated that they – for various reasons – are unable to attend the election though they’d like to.
When it comes to the respondents’ reasons for voting for the candidates they selected, many of those voting for Joe Biden see him as the only chance for replacing Donald Trump in the office. Others specified that they’re going to support him because of his stance on human rights, international relations, socio-economic issues, global warming and Trump’s response to COVID-19.
On the other hand, Donald Trump’s voters living in the Czech Republic will vote for him because of gun laws, his conservative values, his negative stance on immigration and his appointment of conservative judges. Some of them, however, responded that their reasons for voting for him are, for example, “America remaining the greatest nation in the world” or because they want to “make America great again”.
Detailed Results
The reason why the demographic questions were included is that we wanted to see potential correlations between the respondents’ political preferences and their age, gender, place of residence etc.
In many cases, no clear correlations could be found since the results were too diverse and random. This is, for example, the case of the states of origin of the respondents or the length of their stay.
On the other hand, there seems to be a correlation between the respondent’s gender, place of residence, or their age. For example, out of the 23 US citizens living in Brno, only 8.7% (that is 2 respondents) will vote for Trump as compared to 25.6% of Americans living in Prague (that is 10 respondents out of 39) who will vote for him. While this could mean that Trump’s voters are – for various reasons – more likely to live in Prague rather than other, smaller, Czech cities, the result could also be affected by the small sample of respondents.
It should also come as no surprise that women are less likely to vote for Trump than men. Out of the 30 female respondents:
- 86.6% of women will vote for Joe Biden (26 respondents)
- 6.6% of women will vote for Donald Trump (2 respondents)
- 3.3% of women are not yet decided (1 respondent)
- 3.3% of women will not vote at all (1 respondent)
As for male respondents:
- 60% of men will vote for Joe Biden (24 respondents out of the total number of 40 male respondents)
- 27.5% of men will vote for Donald Trump (11 respondents)
- 2.5% of men will vote for Jo Jorgensen (1 respondent)
- 10% of men will not vote at all (4 respondents)
The results also show that the respondents in the 26-35 and 36-45 age groups are more likely than other age groups to vote for Donald Trump. Most respondents in these two age groups will still vote for Joe Biden, though.
In the first mentioned age group (26 – 35 years):
- 65% of respondents will vote for Joe Biden (13 respondents)
- 25% will vote for Donald Trump (5 respondents)
- 5 % of respondents aren’t yet decided who they’ll vote for (1 respondent)
- 10% aren’t going to vote (2 respondents)
In the second mentioned age group (36 – 45 years):
- 50% will vote for Joe Biden (10 respondents)
- 30% will vote for Donald Trump (6 respondents)
- 5% will vote for Jo Jorgensen (1 respondent)
- 5% of respondents aren’t sure they’ll vote at all (1 respondent)
- 15% will not vote at all (3 respondents)
The US presidential election is a big event for everyone and so we’re also curious who will become the next US president. Let us know in the comments who you’d vote for!
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Source of the image: pexels.com
