Poll: Czechs disappointed with both Babiš's government and the opposition — Motorists rated worst of all
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More than six months after taking office, Andrej Babiš's cabinet (ANO) is losing support even among its own voters, while opposition parties fare even worse in the public's eyes. This is according to the second wave of a poll conducted by the STEM/MARK agency exclusively for Seznam Zprávy.
According to the survey, trust in the government on a scale of 0 to 100 stood at an average of 50% in January but had fallen to 46% by the end of May and beginning of June. Among voters of the coalition parties themselves, support for the cabinet dropped by a full nine percentage points.
STEM/MARK analyst Jan Burianec explains the disappointment as a natural "sobering up": after the new government took office, voters expected too much, and half a year on, reality has failed to live up to those inflated expectations. The drop in support among ANO voters themselves is minor, but supporters of Motorists and SPD are voicing their discontent far more openly.
The opposition fares worst of all. Almost half of all respondents rated the performance of the Spolu, STAN and Piráti coalitions as bad or rather bad, while fewer than a fifth called it good. Even among the opposition parties' own supporters, the share of satisfied voters fell from 44% in January to 36% now. Within the opposition, Spolu comes out best (44% satisfied), while Piráti fare worst, with only 27% of their own voters expressing support.
According to Přemysl Čech, director of the Median agency, the opposition is currently fragmented and incapable of decisive action, lacking a single strong leader. Experts also note that part of the opposition electorate may be drifting toward Martin Kuba's new movement, Naše Česko (Our Czechia).
When grading their own parties like school report cards, respondents were strict: only Starostové (STAN) managed to improve its result compared to January. ANO remains the clear leader — almost three-quarters of its voters gave the movement an "excellent" or "good" mark, which analysts attribute to the high loyalty of the party's core electorate.
Motorists, however, received the worst marks of any party in the Chamber of Deputies: only 35% of their supporters gave Petr Macinka's party top grades, while a fifth rated it "unsatisfactory" and 11% "barely satisfactory." Burianec links this to voter disappointment: the party promised to keep a close eye on Prime Minister Babiš, but according to some of its supporters, it has failed to deliver on that promise. Preference polls now show Motorists hovering around the five-percent threshold needed to enter parliament. Political scientist Josef Mlejnek of Charles University's Faculty of Arts also notes that some voters may be put off by Macinka's tendency to seek attention through provocative statements — such as his June speech at the folklore festival in Strážnice.
