78% of voters have already decided who to vote for. Photo credit: Z. Kolarik, Brno City Municipality.
Prague, Jan 4 (CTK) – Roughly one-fifth of Czech voters have still not decided who they will vote for in the first round of the presidential election, set for next week, according to a poll released yesterday by the STEM/MARK polling institute.
78% reporting already knowing who to vote for.
One-third of those who have decided also have a second choice in the case that their favoured candidate does not reach the second, run-off round.
In such a situation, a further 55% said they would only make their decision following the results of the first round, and 13% would not vote in the second round.
Since last autumn, the number of undecided voters has fallen. At the end of September and beginning of October, the figure was 44%.
The poll found that supporters of Andrej Babis (ANO) and Jaroslav Basta (SPD) would be most likely to sit out the second round if their own candidates failed in the first round, whereas supporters of retired general Petr Pavel, economist Danuse Nerudova and independent senator Pavel Fischer were more likely to have a second choice for the second round.
Many supporters of Nerudova, Pavel and Babis, currently the favourites in the January election, are ready to support their rivals in the second round.
Around 69% of those intending to vote for Nerudova in the first round would go on to support Pavel if she failed to advance to the second round, and 14% would switch to Babis.
Of Pavel supporters, 77% would vote for Nerudova and 11% for Babis.
Out of Babis’s followers, 26% would vote for Nerudova and 14% for Pavel in the second round. However, two-fifths of Babis’s voters say they would not participate in the second round if Babis were eliminated.
The agency also asked whether some candidates should step down in favour of a different candidate. 36% agreed with this, while 64% disagreed.
The poll was conducted with a sample of 1,011 Czechs over 18 between 15 and 21 December.
