Andrew Cornwell Czech Republic

Czech Social Democrats pull back ground, but still face huge task

This month’s CVVM poll, published today, is the best of 2017 for the Czech Republic’s largest parliamentary party. The CSSD (Social Democrats) of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka move up to 22 per cent, an advance of 2 points on CVVM’s February survey and well ahead of results from some of the country’s six other polling firms. (Lows of 14 to 15 points have been recorded several times).

However with their coalition partner and main competitor, ANO, also advancing a point to reach 32.5, a joint best score of the year across all polls, the CSSD’s task remains enormous in the months before October’s parliamentary election. Their only comfort is that a deficit of 10.5 points is a considerable improvement on 17 or 18 point gaps seen at the start of March.

 

Chart by Visualizer

 

The junior member of the government, the Christan Democrat KDU-CSL, is down 2.5 points to 6.5 per cent. It should be stressed though that their 9 per cent February score with CVVM was something of an outlier, with 5.5 to 7.8 per cent being otherwise their range of scores so far this year.

Little else in this poll stands outside recent trends, with the communist KSCM maintaining third position and the moderate conservative TOP 09 flirting dangerously with the 5 per cent threshold for gaining seats in the lower house. The eurosceptic SPD is in the same position as it approaches its first Chamber of Deputies election.

 

CVVM
Voting intentions, per cent (change on 27 Feb poll):

ANO * (‘Yes’ – centrist) 32.5 (+1.0)
CSSD * (Social Democratic Party) 22.0 (+2.0)
KSCM (Communist Party) 12.0 (+1.5)
ODS (Civic Democratic Party) 8.5 (-1.5)
KDU-CSL * (Christian Democrats­–People’s Party) 6.5 (-2.5)
TOP 09 (Tradition, Responsibility, Prosperity) 5.5 (-1.0)
SPD (Freedom & Direct Democracy) 5.0 (+2.0)
Others (including Pirates, Greens, Dawn) 8.0 (-1.5)

*denotes party in governing coalition
Fieldwork: 06.03-19.03.2017. Released: 24.03.2017. Participants: 1045. Methodology: Telephone interviews. Basis for responses above = 526 after ‘Don’t Knows’ and ‘Won’t Vote’ excluded. Full report on the CVVM website.

 

FOLLOW EPR on Twitter here.

SHARE this article: