Election, parties

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.

Those polled who preferred or sympathised with a particular political party (829 respondents) were, as part of an October survey, asked a repeated question examining the intensity of the relation with this political party.

Only 12% of voters classified themselves as staunch party supporters. Traditionally, the largest group approving of most of party activities consistently amounted to between 40 and 50% of those polled.

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.

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 60% of those surveyed having the right to vote (‘definitely yes’ by 28% and ‘probably yes’ by 32%), while 31% said no (17% ‘probably not’ and 14% ‘definitely not’) and 9% did not know.

The results indicate that people attach a relatively greater importance to elections to the Chamber of Deputies than to elections to the European Parliament. Not only do citizens express more willingness to participate in elections to the Chamber of Deputies (66%) than to the European Parliament (57%), they also more frequently consider a high turnout a positive in case of national elections (70%) than in case of European elections (61%).

In a June survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre, the respondents who did not participate in the election to the European Parliament were asked to clarify their reasons.

Roughly a fifth of the polled citizens (21%) said that they had not participated in the election because they were dissatisfied with politics, a slightly smaller percentage said they did not know the candidates and that they felt their vote ‘could not decide anything’ (18 and 17% respectively), 13% of respondents said they had been outside their place of residence and roughly a tenth of those surveyed did not take interest in the European Union (or the European Parliament), politics in general or said they disagreed with the accession to the EU.

A June survey by the Public Opinion Research Centre included, inter alia, an aggregate of questions investigating what the Czech public thinks about political parties and the European integration process. Almost a third of Czech citizens over 18 years of age sympathise with no political party. Less than a quarter of respondents sympathise with the ODS, while 13% of those polled sympathise with the KSCM and 9% with the CSSD.

In a June 2004 survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre, the respondents were asked to say how often over the last four weeks before the election to the European Parliament they had paid attention to the activities described in table 1. Roughly a half of the polled citizens said that they had ‘sometimes’ watched the information about the European election on TV, read about it in newspapers and discussed it with friends or family.

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 63% of those surveyed having the right to vote (‘definitely yes’ by 32% and ‘probably yes’ by 31%), while 30% said no (15% ‘probably not’ and 15% ‘definitely not’) and 7% did not know.