Prague, Oct 13 (CTK) – The Czech Senate election’s runoff vote this weekend will decide on how strong the government’s majority will be in the upper house of parliament, but it will change nothing about the Social Democrat (CSSD) senators’ group being the strongest of all.
One-third (27) of the Senate’s 81 seats have been contested in the election consisting of the October 7-8 first round and the October 14-15 runoff.
In seven election wards, candidates of either of the three partners in the national government, i.e. the CSSD, ANO and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), face each other in the runoff. This makes the government sure of emerging with at least 42 upper house seats, including those which are not contested now.
To gain the constitutional majority of 49 seats, they need to win in at least seven of the wards where they face non-government candidates.
However, such achievement would have only a symbolic effect in a situation where the government does not have a constitutional majority in the Chamber Deputies, the lower house of parliament.
Finance Minister Andrej Babis’s ANO movement was the most successful in the first election round, advancing in 14 wards.
However, all its successful candidates beat their respective rivals only narrowly, with the exception of the candidate in the Olomouc ward. Apart from him, ANO’s most hopeful candidates are in the Tabor, Jicin and Bruntal wards.
The most successful party in the runoff might be the KDU-CSL, with nine advancing candidates, at least a half of whom might win the runoff. They are the candidates in the Usti nad Orlici, Pardubice, Brno, Kromeriz and Blansko wards.
Of the CSSD’s nine candidates in the runoff, three or four are likely to succeed, in the Brno, Hodonin, Caslav, Kutna Hora and possibly also Plzen.
Out of the five advancing candidates for the opposition Civic Democrats (ODS), those running in the Cesky Krumlov, Beroun and Jihlava wards are the most promising.
The closest to election are the candidate of the Mayors for the Liberec Region (SLK) in the Liberec ward, the opposition TOP 09’s candidate in Prague 6, and the candidate of the Citizens Together – Independents movement in Frydek Mistek, each winning the first round smoothly with more than 40 percent of the vote.
In many other wards, there is no clear favourite and the runoff result in them is hard to predict.
The outcome will also depend on how many voters the 54 competing candidates will attract to the polling stations. In the runoff vote, turnout is usually up to 50 percent lower than in the first round.
The elections in the 27 wards involve 2.78 million voters. One third of them took part in the first round, which was held simultaneously with the elections to regional assemblies last weekend.
The polling stations will be open from 14:00 to 22:00 CEST on Friday and from 8:00 to 14:00 CEST on Saturday.
The Czech Statistical Office will move the election results onwww.volby.cz.
rtj/dr/kva
