Prague, June 23 (CTK) – The Social Democrats (CSSD) are the most popular Czech political party and the support for the ANO movement, which kept ahead of the CSSD in the past two years, has dropped to the lowest level since the general election in late 2013, according to the CVVM opinion poll released yesterday.
The CVVM election model showed that the CSSD would win 24.5 percent and ANO 23.5 percent of the vote. Thought this is the biggest lead the CSSD achieved since March 2014, it is within the margin of error, the pollsters said.
The CSSD of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and ANO of Finance Minister Andrej Babis are coalition partners, but at the same time they are the biggest rivals in the campaign ahead of the autumn regional and Senate elections, which will be followed by the general election next year. Observers say this is the main cause of the recent coalition dispute about a planned police shake-up.
The Communists (KSCM) remain the third most popular party and the strongest opposition grouping. After gradually dropping from 15.5 percent in January to 11.5 percent in April, their popularity increased to 16 percent this month, which has been the party’s best result since the 2013 election.
The Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), who are the smallest coalition partner, won higher support than both right-wing opposition parties, TOP 09 and the Civic Democrats (ODS). The KDU-CSL received 9 percent, while TOP 09 and the ODS 7 percent each, according to the CVVM model.
One month ago, the ODS won 8 percent, TOP 09 6 percent and the KDU-CSL 5.5 percent. In 2014, TOP 09 was the most popular of the three parties, but the ODS caught up with TOP 09 last year. This year, the ODS has had higher preferences than TOP 09. In 2015, the unpopular Miroslav Kalousek replaced Karel Schwarzenberg in the post of TOP 09 chairman.
No other party would cross the 5-percent threshold to enter the lower house of parliament. The populist Freedom and Direct Democracy won 4 percent, the Greens and the Pirates won 2.5 percent each.
The turnout would be 59 percent, or similar to that in the general election held two and a half years ago.
The poll was conducted among 1005 people on June 3-20.
Support for major Czech political parties from October 2015 according to CVVM polling institute (in percent):
Party Elect
ion 13 Oct 15 Nov 15 Dec 15 Jan 16 Feb 16 March 16 Apr 16 May 16 June 16
CSSD 20.5 26 26.5 26.5 24.5 24.5 22.5 26.5 25.5 24.5
ANO 18.7 29.5 29.5 26 28 27 29 27 28 23.5
KSCM 14.9 11.5 12.5 11 15.5 14 13 11.5 15 16
ODS 7.7 7 8 8.5 9 8.5 10 8.5 8 7
TOP09 12 9 7.5 8 6.5 7 5.5 8 6 7
KDU-CSL 6.8 5.5 7 7 6 7 6 7.5 5.5 9
kva/dr/rtj
