This essay sets out to bring further knowledge within the field of political participation on an aggregated level in Sweden. The theoretical access point for this study is the modernization theory provided by Lipset (1959). This theory will be investigated to see if variables within this theory have an effect on the Swedish voter turn-out. Furthermore this study aims to investigate if the contexts of the economical situations have an effect on modernization. The main questions of this essay is: (1) what effects do modernization have on voter turn-out in Swedish municipals? (2) Regarding the economic cycles, what influence does the effects of modernization have on voter turn-out? The method used in this essay is a qauntative analysis in the form of a bivariate and a multiple regression analysis. The empirical material in this study includes statistics from different public agencies. The analysis aims to investigate three election years, 1994, 2006 and 2014. The empirical study shows that socioeconomic pre-conditions, such as average income level, and urbanization have a positive and strong effect on the Swedish voter turn-out on an aggregated level. This shows that modernization theory is not relevant in full, it rather shows that certain parts of the original theory is relevant today. The effects modernization have on voter turn-out is also a lot stronger when the economic context is an economic boom. When the economy goes down the effect goes down with it.

Bibliographic record PROKOP, Daniel. (2012). Election polls in the Czech Republic: Methodological Optimization. Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institut of Sociological Studies. Thesis academic consultant: Mgr. Jindřich Krejčí, Ph.D. Abstract The thesis focuses on the election-polls and prediction of election results in the Czech Republic. Using data of research company MEDIAN s.r.o. from face-to-face (CAPI) and telephone interviewing (CATI) in election year 2010 it examines possibilities of methodological optimizations which could lead to reducing systematic bias and discrepancies of pre-election polls the election results. In particular, it discusses these methodological solutions: mix-mode data collection (combination of CATI and CAPI), data weighting focused on specific factors correlated with voting behavior, including preferences of undecided voters, prediction of the respondents' participation in elections, election-polls results time-series smoothing. Based on these analyses the thesis tries to articulate general findings which could be fruitful in discussion about Czech election-polls and their methodology in general. In the thesis, basic and advanced statistic methods (CART, exponential smoothing, etc.) are being used to achieve given research goals. Keywords: election...