Personal values as a determinant of dominant political preferences

ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: The work analyses the role of basic personal values in the political choice of Croatian voters. From a probability sample of 1130 citizens, 436 potential voters of the two strongest Croatian political parties were selected (HDZ and SDP). The relative contribution of personal values to political choice was assessed by means of binary logistic regression. Demographic variables (sex, age, education and household income) were entered in the analyses as a separate block of predictors. The study revealed that the analysed predictors have a rather moderate explanatory power in predicting the intention to vote. Both sets of predictors accounted for approximately 20% of the variability in political choice. However, the importance attributed to personal values (namely, values of tradition and universalism) demonstrated stronger associations with voters' political preferences than did the background variables, accounting therefore for the significantly larger proportion of variance in future voting. // ABSTRACT IN GERMAN: Die vorliegende Arbeit ist eine Analyse zum Bezug zwischen den Wertvorstellungen und den politischen Präferenzen der kroatischen Wähler. Aus einer probabilistischen Untersuchungsgruppe von 1130 Menschen wurden 436 Personen ausgesucht, die aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach zu den Wählern der zwei stärksten kroatischen Parteien (HDZ Reprinted by permission of Drustvena Istrazivanja