Political

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.

Among other issues, a September poll by the Public Opinion Research Centre investigated the importance party affiliation plays in the gaining of employment in the public administration. The respondents were generally questioned how important party affiliation is for gaining employment in the public administration. Moreover, they were asked to study four hypothetical situations concerning four fictitious persons to assess the importance of party affiliation in these individual cases.

As regards tax collection from them, citizens consider the existing effectiveness of the public administration to be quite high. In the opinion of 47% of economically active persons, the public administration is ‘very effective’ in the collection of their taxes. 23% consider it ’quite effective’, 9% ‘medium effective’ and only 5% of those polled stated that the public administration is ‘quite’ or ‘totally’ ineffective in respect of tax collection from them.

In its September survey, the Public Opinion Research Centre asked the respondents the following question: ”How would you evaluate the activity of the following political parties and institutions within the period of the last twelve months? Please use marking system as used in schools, where one is the best and five is the worst mark.” The best results – with an average mark lower than 3 – were achieved by media and the president.

Of all the monitored areas, citizens took the most negative view of the current state of corruption and security. A substantial majority of those polled (two thirds in the event of corruption) voiced their dissatisfaction with these issues. The prevalence of dissatisfaction is also quite noticeable in the assessment of the judicature and the state of the legal environment. A more critical than positive assessment is given to one’s own possibilities to participate in the decision-making process about public affairs and the functioning of authorities.

In the first half of September the president was regarded as trustworthy by 61%, Czech government by 29%, Chamber of Deputies by 22%, Senate by 21%, regional councils by 36% and local councils by 57% of the polled citizens. The last survey brought – with the exception of the president – a statistically quite significant drop of confidence in all the constitutional institutions. As far as the government is concerned, it is a long-term trend, because within the last 9 months the government has gradually lost 20 % of people, who initially considered it trustworthy.

In September, 14% of those surveyed were satisfied with the political situation, which is a drop by 6 percentage points when compared to June. 29% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, while 52% of respondents were dissatisfied – an increase by 7 percentage points since June. People with good living standards and young people who do not yet have the right to vote more frequently belonged to the group of the satisfied.

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 65% of those surveyed having the right to vote (‘definitely yes’ by 36% and ‘probably yes’ by 29%), while 27% said no (14% ‘probably not’ and 13% ‘definitely not’) and 8% did not know.