Pilsen records highest turnout in Czech Senate runoff elections

The highest turnout in the second round of the Senate elections was in the Plzeň-City district, where 27.24% of voters went to the polls. That is well above the national runoff average of 21.12%. Opposition candidate Karel Řehka won, and what drew people to the polls was a controversial billboard campaign.

“The highest turnout in the second round of the Senate elections was in the Plzeň-City constituency,” said Jan Cieslar, spokesman for the Czech Statistical Office.

Only a week earlier, nothing suggested that the district would stand out. In the first round, turnout there was 40.75%, even below the national average of 43.31%. Then the provocative billboards appeared.

The billboards that sparked a row

In Pilsen, Lumír Aschenbrenner was defending his Senate seat for the ODS. After the first round, in which he finished only third, he unexpectedly allowed himself to be photographed for ANO advertising billboards together with candidate Kantorová. The posters carried the slogan: “Pilsen should be represented in the Senate by someone who lives in Pilsen.” The reaction was negative, and not only among the ODS leadership.

Communications strategist Vladan Vaněk believes that the fuss over the billboards energized voters who would not otherwise have come to the second round and who had taken against Aschenbrenner. “I would say that with this move he effectively helped Karel Řehka,” he said.

The results bear this out. In the first round, Řehka won 32.86% of the vote and beat Kantorová by 5.6 percentage points. In the second round he had a commanding 59.37%, and he finished almost 19 percentage points ahead of his ANO rival.

How the ODS responded

The billboard dispute flared up on Tuesday, when party leader Martin Kupka distanced himself from Aschenbrenner’s campaign move. “I fundamentally disagree with the look of this billboard and consider it unacceptable,” the ODS chairman wrote on the social network X.

The very next day, the ODS leadership decided that the posters had to go: they would be covered with a simple thank-you to voters. According to Czech media, Kupka personally initiated the measure. “It is also in agreement with Lumír Aschenbrenner,” he said.

The posters named ANO as the client, but the advertising space was rented by the ODS, according to media reports before the elections.

On Monday, after the first round, the outgoing senator had said that the Senate elections were over for him. “I will not give anyone a recommendation; everyone will weigh their own choice,” Aschenbrenner wrote on the social network X. But then the ODS began to notice the billboards in question.

Aschenbrenner had said earlier that he respects Kantorová. He did not want his name to appear next to the joint photo, but he stands by the quote about supporting a person who lives in Pilsen. Similar slogans were also used in Kantorová’s own campaign. Her opponent Řehka is not from the Pilsen region, but lives a few kilometers outside the city.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz