Prague, Jan 26 (CTK) – The Czech right-wing TOP 09 would not enter the Chamber of Deputies if the general election was held now, according to the STEM agency’s poll released yesterday, nine months before the elections.
The poll showed that the ANO movement of Finance Minister Andrej Babis would win far ahead of the Social Democrats (senior government CSSD) and Communists (senior opposition KSCM) whose popularity has fallen since December. The right-wing opposition Civic Democrats (ODS) and the junior government Christian Democrats improved their positions. No other party would enter parliament.
In such a situation, ANO could form a majority government with any of the above four parties.
The drop in TOP 09’s popularity seems no surprise as the Mayors and Independents (STAN) party ended its alliance with TOP 09 at the end of the year.
Since October 2015, STEM polls indicated that TOP 09 would have problems to cross the 5-percent threshold to enter parliament, but this was the first time that TOP 09 failed.
In the 2013 general election, TOP 09 won 12 percent of the vote and ended up in the opposition, after three years in government. The support for TOP 09 already decreased after the ageing Karel Schwarzenberg left the post of chairman in late 2015.
According to the STEM model, ANO won 29.9 percent of the vote, the CSSD 14.6 percent, the KSCM 12.6 percent, the ODS 9.8 percent and the KDU-CSL 7.8 percent.
TOP 09 received 4.6 percent, ending behind the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement of populist Tomio Okamura (4.9 percent).
The Pirates won 4.1 percent of the vote, the STAN 2.9 percent and the Greens 2.1 percent.
The pollsters said support for the Mayors and Independents is still nascent as the party separated from TOP 09 only recently.
The turnout would be 57 percent, the poll showed.
STEM conducted the poll on 1048 respondents aged over 18 on January 11-23.
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