Czech Republic: Ruling ANO party would lose election, survey shows

Prague, Czech Republic – The ruling ANO party of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis would lose if elections were held today, a new Kantar survey has found.

Babis’ ANO party losing support as pandemic rages in the Czech Republic

According to the Kantar poll for Czech Television, the opposition coalition between the Czech Pirate Party and STAN would win the parliamentary elections with 34% of the votes, far surpassing the ruling ANO party that would come second with 22% of the ballots.

The Pirate-STAN coalition saw its popularity increase by 4.5 percentage points compared to last month’s survey, while Babis’ movement reported a similar drop.

Commenting on the results, Kantar analyst Ondrej Rybon confirmed that the surge of support for the Pirates-STAN coalition came directly from ANO supporters losing faith the movement of Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who’s now facing mounting criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In third place, the coalition of right-wing parties ODS, TOP 09 and KDU-CSL would win 17.5% of the votes, ahead of the far-right SPD (11%) and the Communist Party (5.5%).

Czech Pirate Party leading in polls for first time

With only 4.5%, the Social Democrats (CSSD) and junior partner of the ruling coalition would fail to make the 5% threshold needed to send representatives to Parliament.

The Kantar survey also looked at the popularity of individual parties regardless of coalitions. Tellingly, the Pirates Party of Ivan Bartos would – for the first time – come first with 22% ahead of ANO (20.5%). STAN would come third (13%), followed by Tomio Okamura’s SPD (10.5%) and ODS (9.5%).

The Kantar poll was carried out from February 15 to March 5 with a representative panel of around 1,000 people.

The next parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held this year on October 8-9.