The survey entitled "Use of Religion in Political Campaigns" was conducted after the parliamentary elections in the second half of July 2020. The survey was conducted on a similar questionnaire as the previous survey conducted about three years ago, ie after the 2017 local elections, and in order to make a comparative analysis and to detect possible changes in the perception of citizens in the past few years. This research, as well as previous similar researches that aims to detect the connection of religion with various social processes, conducted in the period 2016-2020, is part of the project "Republic of North Macedonia as a multi-confessional society."
Religious beliefs are often used by political parties in the run-up to elections. Religion has always been one of the topics of the political campaign, and sometimes among the most important segments of the underground (or anonymous) negative campaign, conducted by several political parties in the past, albeit with varying intensity, depending on political circumstances before the elections. Parties use religion to create tensions and an atmosphere of conflict in order to mobilize new voices. In the last parliamentary elections in 2016, some of the political parties openly promoted religion as one of the main instruments in the political campaign. The main purpose of this research was to determine the perception of society about the use and influence of religion in political campaigns, both in terms of the use of religion by different political entities, as well as in terms of the approach of religious communities to politics.
The research was conducted by telephone on a representative sample of 1110 respondents older than 18 years. The marginal error is between +/- 2.9% with a 95% confidence interval.
