Czech poll: ANO below 30%, ODS third, KDU-ČSL near threshold

The ANO movement, which won the last Chamber of Deputies election with 34.51%, received 29.9% in the November poll by the NMS agency. That is 1.1 percentage points more than in October, but still below 30%. STAN is in second place (17.8%) and ODS in third (10.5%).

ANO: a slight rise, but still below 30%

According to NMS, ANO voters were more confident in their choice in November than a month earlier: they more often say they will definitely vote and will give their vote to this movement. NMS political analyst Tereza Friedrichová links this to the heightened and increasingly polarized situation surrounding the fight over licence fees for public media.

“ANO’s advantage is that its voters don’t yet have a real alternative, so they will rally around it more strongly,” she said. Michal Malý, a political scientist at Charles University, added that the effect of the debate over abolishing public media fees and the related protests is yet to be seen. Still, ANO falling below 30% again is something that has not happened often in the past.

ODS slumps, STAN loses a point

STAN gets 17.8%, one point less than in October. ODS slid to third place with 10.5%, losing as many as two percentage points at once.

If this trend continues, Malý says, a serious debate will begin over whether Martin Kupka should remain party chairman. “The saddest part is that it’s unclear who could replace him. At the moment, in my view, there is no one in ODS you could point to and say: that’s Kupka’s successor,” the political scientist concluded.

Other parties and gains near the threshold

There was little change for SPD (7%, compared with 8% last time), the Pirates (6.6% versus 6.3%) and Motoristé (5.9% versus 5.7%). The Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) gained more noticeably, rising from 3.3% to 4.2%. Naše Česko climbed from 2.3% to 4.7%. Both parties ended up just below the five-percent threshold for entering the Chamber of Deputies.

According to Friedrichová, these are the best results for both parties in the NMS model in a long time. This was the first poll since the municipal and Senate elections, in which Martin Kuba’s Naše Česko succeeded in České Budějovice and won its first senator. KDU-ČSL, in her assessment, benefited from a successful campaign and the name recognition of leader Jan Grolich, who won a Senate seat in Vyškov already in the first round.

Core voters and potential

ANO has the largest stable core: 18.1% of voters are certain they will vote for it. For STAN, the figure is only 4.9%. On the other hand, Mayors and Independents have great potential: 29.9% of citizens are willing to consider voting for them, compared with 34.8% for ANO.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz