As for opinions concerning the benefit of introducing self-governing regions the Czech public remained significantly ambivalent. Approximately one quarter of the interviewees believe that the introduction of self-governing regions, which have now been existing for four years, was proved right. However, approximately the same part of the respondents holds the very opposite view. Another quarter stated that this issue cannot be judged after such a short time period.

In October survey, the Public Opinion Research Centre investigated whether the interviewed people confide in selected politicians. This time the submitted list included the names of 27 representatives of the parties present in the Chamber of Deputies. The respondents expressed the highest level of confidence in ČSSD leader Stanislav Gross (50 %). He is followed by Mirek Topolánek, Cyril Svoboda, Jan Zahradil, Lubomír Zaorálek, Miloslav Ransdorf and Miroslav Kalousek.

In October 2004, Czech citizens expressed the highest level of confidence in the president of the country. He was found trustworthy by almost three quarters of the respondents. Local councils were found trustworthy by more than a half of the interviewees (62 %). Approximately two fifths of the interviewees trust their regional council (42 %) and also our government (40 %). In comparison with the previous month the government’s position has slightly improved.

A part of the October survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre was also a set of questions devoted to the Czech education system. Czech citizens judge the quality of all types of schools in a relatively positive way. Compared with other types of schools, education at secondary training institutions was valued as being on a good level by the smallest amount of respondents. Regardless of that, their quality was appraised as good by two thirds of respondents, who answered the question.

The question in the September survey, if the existence of small breweries in the Czech Republic was endangered, was mostly answered by respondents (37 %) by saying they could not judge these issues and 15 % of the approached citizens were not interested in it. A fifth of respondents think that small breweries are seriously endangered. The statement that small breweries are not seriously endangered in any way was supported by another fifth of respondents.

All respondents having the right to vote were asked an open question (i.e. without a list of political parties being used) investigating which party they would vote for if an election to the Chamber of Deputies took place the following week (the question was: ‘Imagine that an election to the Chamber of Deputies is held next week. If you participated, which party would you vote for?’). The structure of the answers given is summarised in the table.

All respondents eligible to vote (except Prague citizens, 827 respondents) were asked the following question: ‘The elections to the regional councils are going to be held in November. Will you participate?’ The question was answered yes by 58% of those surveyed (‘definitely yes’ by 25% and ‘probably yes’ by 33%), while 30% said no (16% ‘probably not’ and 14% ‘definitely not’) and 12% did not know.

As a September poll of the Public Opinion Research Centre indicates, people place the greatest trust in persons they know (87% of respondents trust most of them) and in the president (76%). They generally consider the army (62%) and the media, namely television (67%) and newspapers (61%), to be trustworthy. More than a half of respondents are of the opinion that they can believe the majority of people in our country (51%), whereas two fifths are persuaded to the contrary.

In its September survey, the Public Opinion Research Centre paid attention to restaurants, pubs and beer drinking. Therefore, we asked respondents if they sometimes went or had gone to a pub, or such a facility, which could be classified as a pub, whatever its official name was. More than three quarters of Czech citizens have gone to a pub at least sometime in their lives. Less than a fifth of respondents, according to their words, have never visited a pub.

People, who drink beer, usually like it. Only 6 % said that they more likely do not enjoy it; however 39 % of respondents answered that they liked beer very much, other 54 % chose the option “more likely to enjoy it”. The most popular type of beer is draught ten-degree proof light beer, which is preferred by 42 % of citizens. About one fifth (19 %) of respondents named light twelve-degree proof beer as their favourite type of beer, one tenth light eleven-degree proof beer and 6 % prefer stout.