The ruling center-right coalition of the Civic Democrats (ODS), TOP 09 and Public Affairs (VV) has gained some ground among potential voters but would still fall short of winning a majority in the lower house of Parliament in elections were held now, according to a poll released Feb. 14 by the Center for Empirical Studies (STEM).
“The biggest increase was recorded Public Affairs (2.5 percentage points), which partially offset the January decline for TOP 09. The position of the Social Democrats (ČSSD) is still supreme, but in comparison with January the Communists (KSČM) lost support,” STEM said in its report.
The ODS polled at 16 percent support among respondents, up from 15 percent in January. TOP 09 rose to 11.9 percent from 10.0 percent and VV — led by Interior Minister Radek John — hit 8.7 percent, up from 6.2 percent a month earlier. While TOP 09 showed some improvement over January, it had polled even higher in December (at 14 percent).
When all voters — including those who are undecided and those who will vote for parties that won’t make it into past the 5 percent threshold for entering Parliament — the ruling coalition garnered the support of just 36.6 percent of respondents.
For the left-wing parties, the ČSSD rose in support to 27.3 percent from 26.4 percent a month earlier. The still largely unreformed Communists (KSČM) dropped to 9.3 percent from 11.2 percent a month earlier.
The Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL), the strongest of the parties that failrf to reach the 5 percent cutoff point, also saw its support drop, to 3.3 percent from 3.8 percent. The Greens (SZ) came in at 2.6 percent.
Meanwhile, more potential voters made up their minds in the February poll, with those claiming not to know whom they would vote for dropping to 9.7 percent from 13.6 percent, the biggest shift in the poll results. However, those saying they would not vote for any party rose slightly, to 7.2 percent from 6.4 percent. Statistical error was 1.5 percent for smaller parties and 2.5 percent for larger parties, STEM said.
Closing the gap
When unlikely voters are excluded, and the remaining votes are projected based on previous outcomes, a left-wing coalition would still have the best chance. “The model calculated based on likely voters would still place only five parties in the Chamber of Deputies. The loss of the government coalition to two left-wing parties is generally reduced, but according to the mandate model the ODS, TOP 09 and VV won’t get a majority,” the polling agency said.
Under this model, the ČSSD would get 81 seats and the KSČM would get 24, totaling 105 out of the 200 seats in the lower house; this is a drop from 113 seats in the January poll.
The ruling coalition would get 45 seats for the ODS, 32 seats for TOP 09 and 18 seats for VV, totaling 95 seats., up from 87 seats a month earlier. The margin of error is 2 seats, according to STEM.
STEM stresses that this result is theoretical. “Party preferences show the relative strength of political parties at that time research. Translating those numbers into a model election result is not easy because it can be difficult to determine which respondents would actually participate in the elections and whether the electoral motivations of voters will be similar to previous elections or whether the election result will reflect the emotions of the last minute, and so on,” STEM said.
The poll took place between Jan. 28 and Dec. 4, 2011, with 1,246 respondents over 18 years of age.
