Čtvrtek 28. března 2024, svátek má Soňa
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Lidovky.cz

Nine in 10 wouldn’t vote for VV again: poll

  10:44

One in four Czechs wouldn’t vote again for the party they backed in the 2010 parliamentary elections, STEM agency poll finds

Vít Bárta si právě vyslechl verdikt soudu. foto: © ČTKČeská pozice

Czechs who voted two years ago for one of the parties that made up the original center-right coalition government led by Prime Minister Petr Nečas (Civic Democrats, ODS) are the least likely to support the same party again, a poll released on Thursday shows.

In total, almost three in four Czechs polled said they thought they had made the right choice in the May 2010 contest, (28 percent saying they “definitely” had and 43 percent “probably” had), according to the findings of the STEM agency poll of 1,084 voting age Czechs, conducted from April 18-29.

The results bode well for the opposition: Those who voted for either the center-left Social Democrats (ČSSD) or the Communists (KSČM), were the most certain to do so again if elections were held today. A mere 8 percent of self-identified past ČSSD voters said they “probably” or “definitely” not vote the same way now, with the corresponding figure at 1 percent among past KSČM supporters.

By comparison, 27 percent of past ODS voters said they “probably” (18 percent) or “definitely” (9 percent) would not do so if elections for the lower house of parliament were held not. For the party’s coalition partner, TOP 09, the figures are 29 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

The highest negative numbers in this regard — and by more than 50 percentage points — were those who voted for the Public Affairs (VV) party, which left the government coalition in late April, on the heels of party founder and paymaster Vít Bárta’s conviction for attempting to bribe fellow VV deputies for their “silence and loyalty.”

Sixty-eight percent of those polled who said they had voted for VV, an upstart party that ran largely on an anti-corruption ticket, said they “definitely would not” vote for it again. A number of MPs have left the party to join the newly registered party LIDEM (short for Liberal Democrats) of Karolína Peake, the deputy prime minister leading the government's anti-corruption initiative.

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