A year on from the last elections, the opposition ANO party has a clear lead in opinion polls. Credit: Freepik.
Prague, Sept 12 (CTK) – The opposition ANO, led by former Prime Minister Andrej Babis, has a clear lead in voting intention surveys with 30.5% of the vote, followed by the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of PM Petr Fiala with 19.5%, according to the Kantar CZ election model presented yesterday by Czech Television.
Three other parties would enter the Chamber of Deputies: Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) with 11%, the Pirate Party with 8.5%, and the Mayors and Independents (STAN) with 6.5%.
The poll was carried out from 15 August to 2 September. Compared with the previous Kantar poll from May, ANO has slightly improved its position and the ODS fell back by 3 percentage points.
Several parties are polling below the 5% threshold to enter the lower house of parliament, including TOP 09 (4.5%), the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL; 4%), the Communists (3.5%), Prisaha (3%), and the Social Democrats (CSSD; 3%).
If the parties ran in the same coalitions as in last year’s election, ANO (32 percent) would win closely ahead of the SPOLU alliance (29%) of ODS, KDU-CSL and TOP 09. Both ANO and SPOLU would receive more votes than in the 2021 general election. The junior opposition SPD are polling at 11%, while the junior government coalition of the Pirate Party and STAN would take 10%, a significant drop from their 15.5% vote-share in the last election.
Kantar analyst Nikola Kopacova said the voters who left ODS did so because they were not satisfied with the government’s actions. She said these voters moved to various parties, some to ODS’s government partners but also SPD or extra-parliamentary parties.
