In the October census carried out by the Centre for Public Opinion Research respondents expressed the level of their support for individual groups. The largest share of support was allocated to small private entrepreneurs (electricians, heating engineers, seamstresses, etc), followed by owners of mall shops and doctors. A mostly negative response was detected towards senior politicians, foreign owners of companies and senior officials and civil servants.

Despite his 4 % drop, the very top of the politicians popularity chart still belongs to Stanislav Gross (62 %). He is followed by president Václav Klaus and the ex-president Václav Havel (both scoring 55 %) and Petra Buzková enjoys 50% confidence.

In comparison with the April 2003 results there was a significant growth of the number of people trusting ministers Ambrozek and Mlynář. A rather significant public confidence drop, however, was experienced by minister Škromach, prime minister Špidla, ODS leader Topolánek, Senate chairman Pithart, president Klaus and minister Dostál.

People place the greatest trust in persons they know (88% of respondents trust most of them). They generally consider our media, namely television (66%) and newspapers (60%), the president (62%) and the army (58%) to be trustworthy. More than a half of respondents are of the opinion that they can believe the majority of people in our country (55%), whereas roughly two fifths are persuaded to the contrary.

The view of the Czech general public on entrepreneurs is clearly differentiated depending on whether it is owners of small, medium or large enterprise that are in question. Generally it can be said that people appreciate owners of small and medium enterprise much more than large companies. People usually reckon that both groups of entrepreneurs “have the courage to take risks and to explore unknown fields”, they perceive them as “enterprising, clever people with good ideas” and they think that “they work many hours per day, at the expense of the time that could be spend with the family or just on themselves”, the majority of the general public however think that it is a typical feature for large-scale entrepreneurs to search for loopholes in the law, to jointly prevent price reductions, to be closely connected to current politicians, to be recruited from the previous nomenclature, to be ruthless in destroying their competitors, and to acquired their property in a fraudulent way.

32% of those who were asked indicated that the standard of living of their household was good, contrary to the opinion of 25%, and 43 % of respondents characterised it as neither good nor bad. Compared to all previous polls from 2003 this shows a rather significant setback in the subjective evaluation of the standard of living of households, which in the past indicated that up to two fifths of respondents considered it to be good and less than one fifth had the opposite opinion.

More than three quarters of Czechs are satisfied with the level of interesting aspects of their jobs and with relationships between people at their workplace. More than a half of employees also were satisfied with the care received from their employer, with material possessions and equipment at the workplace, with the way their work is organised, with its intensity, with their line-manager, and with the extent to which their expertise is used.

The general political orientation of the Czech population is one of the topics the Public Opinion Research Centre has been systematically monitoring. October surveys conclude that in the right-left political spectrum, the Czech population is divided in a way that corresponds with most patterns in the population: the largest group of people shows average figures (20%) and their numbers are gradually decreasing towards the edges.

Czech people attribute the highest level of trustworthiness to the president and local councils; that is what 6 out of 10 people declare. Four of ten people trust the Czech government and their regional council. After the significant September drop of the Czech citizens’ confidence in all the constitutional institutions (with the exception of the president of the republic) we registered a follow-up growth in their trust in these institutions.

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 structure of the answers given is summarised in the table. The question ‘Imagine that an election to the Chamber of Deputies is held next week. Would you participate?’ was answered yes by 67% of those surveyed having the right to vote (‘definitely yes’ by 29% and ‘probably yes’ by 38%), while 26% said no (13% ‘probably not’ and 13% ‘definitely not’) and 7% did not know.

More than three quarters of Czechs are satisfied with the level of interesting aspects of their jobs and with relationships between people at their workplace. More than a half of employees also were satisfied with the care received from their employer, with material possessions and equipment at the workplace, with the way their work is organised, with its intensity, with their line-manager, and with the extent to which their expertise is used.