Political

60% of respondents read at least sometimes about politics in newspapers (a total of ‘often’ and ‘sometimes’ answers), whereas 11% do not. At least a half of respondents at least sometimes discuss politics with friends but 74% of those polled never persuade their friends to adopt the same opinion. Almost 80% of respondents get ‘hardly ever’ or ‘never’ involved in solving public problems.

In late March and early April, 35% of those polled said they were satisfied with the current political situation in the Czech Republic (‘very satisfied’ – 2%, ‘quite satisfied’ – 33%), whereas 60% were dissatisfied (‘quite dissatisfied’ – 43% and ‘very dissatisfied’ – 17%) and 5% did not know.

Confidence in the army (56%) and courts (41%) has reached its historical maximum, however, in the case of media (57%) the level of public confidence is at its historical minimum. The police is trusted by 53%, Constitutional court by 51%, churches by 34%, banks by 33%, trade unions by 29% of the respondents. Political parties enjoy confidence of only 12% of the respondents, 79% regard them...

The following two statements met with the greatest response from those surveyed. 91% of them agreed with the statement ‘hard-working people deserve to earn more than others’, whereas 6% did not. The respondents took a similar stance on the last statement saying that ‘it is right that people with more talent and abilities make more money’. A total of 90% of respondents agreed with this statement, while 6% of those participating in the survey disagreed.

No major sociodemographic differences occurred in respect of CSSD supporters (22%), except a higher percentage of white-collar employees. The ODS (20%) is attractive primarily for respondents with good living standards and voters with university or full secondary education. The party also occupies a strong position among businessmen and tradesmen, white-collar employees, intellectual workers and among Prague inhabitants.

Governments of the CSSD and the Coalition (22%) or the ODS and the Coalition (20%) belong to the most acceptable post-election coalitions.

As the terrorist attacks on the USA and the conflict in Afghanistan are diminishing in importance, public attention is turning to domestic events. For the first time since November, the public paid in January more attention to the domestic political scene than the foreign one, a trend confirmed and becoming more apparent in February. If it had not been for the Olympic games, the domestic political scene would probably have captured even more attention.

The results clearly reveal that the ODS and the CSSD stand the greatest chance of succeeding in the election, and in this respect there are not any significant differences between them. Almost three quarters of respondents think that both of these parties belong to the two most successful ones, with a difference occurring only in respect of their position. In contrast, citizens are of the opinion that the Coalition stands a significantly lesser chance of succeeding, expected to come first or second only by a tenth of respondents, while approximately the same percentage of respondents think that the KSCM will achieve the same results.

Confidence in the army (56%) and courts (41%) has reached its historical maximum, however, in the case of media (57%) the level of public confidence is at its historical minimum. The police is trusted by 53%, Constitutional court by 51%, churches by 34%, banks by 33%, trade unions by 29% of the respondents. Political parties enjoy confidence of only 12% of the respondents, 79% regard them as untrustworthy.

In comparison with the last year and even more significantly to the year 1999 virtually all the monitored subjects achieved a relatively distinct improvement of their evaluation (with the exception of ODS and media, whose resulting ”mark” has been worse than in 2001). Nevertheless, the public’s view on most of the monitored institutions still remains less positive than it was in 1998...