Czech Politics: Fiala government

[Diouf]

The most recent polls have started to show Přísaha between 4 and 5%. It seems like a di Pietro throwback. Přísaha translates as oath and is a party founded by Robert Šlachta, who gained publicity as the investigator in the 2013 corruption scandals, which ended with the fall of the Necas cabinet.
Šlachta is campaigning mostly on an anti-corruption platform. Right now, he is focusing a lot on some dodgy deals in relation to covid-19 equipment ("They are traffickers of Chinese respirators. Dodgy companies with offices in the Caribbean, linked to criminally prosecuted lobbyists, and with car wash branches in Ukraine.") He wants an audit of all public procurement in the covid-19 era
Other than that the party's program is mostly about simplicity, transparency and equality, e.g. a simpler criminal law system, equality for the law, an open register of companies receiving subsidies, a simpler benefit system etc. Some classic, horrible slogans like "One new law equals two old ones away".

So far, Šlachta has wanted to keep himself out of all political cooperation, ""We are campaigning on the program we adopted, and there is no way we are going into government. I don't see any offers. We're not going to negotiate anything in advance with anyone." He says cooperation will be something to be dealt with after the election, but says he's not ruling anyone out.

He calls the party a centrist one, and describes his personality as a conservative one, focused on issues like tradition and honesty. But when asked about gay marriage f.ex., he does not state clearly how he would vote, and says it would be a free vote for his MPs.

There are rumours about ties of the party to prominent figures from the previous anti-corruption party VV, who was in government in 2010-2012. Necas himself accused Šlachta of being close to VV minister Vít Bárta, who was later in a corruption case himself.

[Diouf]

Tonight is the so-called "Super Debate" between the major party leaders ahead of the election on Friday and Saturday. It seems like Vit Rakusan will represent PiratiStan, which I guess is an attempt to show the more palatable face of that alliance despite the Pirate party being the much larger party. For SPOLU, it is of course ODS leader Petr Fiala. In addition to the six parties/party alliances elected in 2017, the debate will also include two parties/party alliances trying to pass the treshold this time. Robert Šlachta from Prisaha and Zuzana Majerová Zahradníková for the Trikolora-led alliance.

[Diouf]

Babis says in an interview with MF DNES that this election will be his last one, and if ANO doesn't stay in government, he will leave politics as he can't see himself on the opposition benches. He says that if this election ends up with ODS and Pirates in power together, we will see a surrender of sovereignty to Brussels and adoption of the euro, raised taxes, freezed pensions, a privatision of hospitals and Czech Post, and an economy in recession. Babis said he would reach out to all parties after the election, except the Pirates because they will will restrict everything, forbid and dictate to us how we should live, and hand over the sovereignty of the Czech Republic to the European Parliament and other countries. Both SPOLU and PiratiStan have of course said that they won't join a government with Babis.

[Diouf]

So the voting starts tomorrow and as usual takes place over two days. Polls are open from 14.00-20.00 on Friday, and from 08.00-14.00 on Saturday.

Ceska Televize can be followed here and will surely have a livestream available Saturday https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/
MF DNES also tends to have very good clickable election graphics: https://www.idnes.cz/volby

Two important things to remember. The electoral system has been changed. See my post below from earlier this year with the new system as well as a calculation of the 2017 result with the new system. This means that in reality the current governing majority has already lost its majority, and ANO has lost 9 seats. I'm guessing the broadcasters will show seat counts compared to the actual 2017 result. So it's important to remember that even if ANO keeps its vote share or only drop a little, it will significantly lose seats. Another thing to remember is that they don't tend to make running, updated prognosis of the final result based on votes coming in. There will proably be an exit poll when polls close, but other than that it is usually pure vote count. Which means that the Prague vote comes in late which should be kept in mind. This in 2017 e.g. meant that TOP09 slowly crept up throughout the evening, and crossed the 5% threshold very late.

There seems to be agreement on a new electoral system after the Constitutional Court's verdict. I haven't seen the final compromise text yet, but from what i can see it will be in this way:
The threshold will stay at 5% for single parties, 8% for a 2-party coalition and 11% for a coalition with more than two parties. So there will still be higher threshold for coalitions, but lower than the 10% and 15% threshold struck down by the court.
In terms of the distribution of the seats, it will now be a two-tier process with compensatory seats instead of the previous system, where seats were only distributed on the regional level. In the new system, the Imperiali quota (votes for parties above threshold/number of seats + 2) will be calculated for each region. Then parties will get seats according to how many times, they pass the quota. So with 90.000 votes, and a 20.000 quota, it would be 4 seats. After this first distribution, there will be some seats undistributed (around 30 of 200 expected). Nationally, the distribution of these seats will be calculated based on a nationwide quota (surplus votes from the regional distribution for all parties above threshold/number of seats left + 1). If the seat distribution via quota does not match the exact number of seats to give, then the parties closest to an extra seat via quota will get the seat (or the other way around if too many seats are distributed). There was then quite some debate about how these compensatory seats should be distributed on the regional level. Committee leader Benda from ODS thought it a super idea to allow the parties themselves to decide in which regions they wanted their compensatory seats, but luckily a sane majority in parliament decided that these seats are distributed automatically, taking into account a party's votes and seats in each region + the number of seats left in each region.
It is still semi-closed lists. You can break the list from a lower position if you get at least 5% of the party's votes.
To me it seems like a really great outcome. The two-tier process and the quota distribution should give a more fair distribution of seats on the national level, like the court mandated. I would prefer completely open party lists, but you can't get the perfect system.

I tried to do a calculation of the new system with the 2017 results.
I get the following numbers:

ANO 69 (-9)
ODS 24 (-1)
Pirati 24 (+2)
SPD 23 (+1)
KSCM 16 (+1)
CSSD 15 (=)
KDU-CSL 11 (+1)
TOP09 9 (+2)
STAN 9 (+3)

As expected, smaller parties benefit while bigger parties lose. The new system will also advantage those parties who will have been just below the old regional seat threshold in many places; often because many votes have been received in one or two regions. The governing majority would just lose its majority with this system (100 seats out of 200).

[Diouf]

I haven't seen any educated guesses on the turnout after the first day. Just that there are indictions that turnout is higher than for some years. The last two elections it has been around 60%. There are some talks it could be 65% or higher, which would be the highest since 1998 when it was all the way up at 73.9%.

[Diouf]

PiratiStan likely not gonna reach the heights they polled a few months ago, but they should be the party rising throughout the evening as Prague votes get counted.

[Diouf]

5% counted, and already it looks like the Trikolora-led alliance won't get enough votes to really challenge for the threshold. They are only at 2.62%.

[Diouf]

And both CSSD and KSCM will need a good buffer to the 5% threshold before the flood of the Prague votes as they tend to underperform in the capital. Not as clear to me yet how Prisaha's distribution will be.

[Diouf]

If all the parties around the threshold end up missing it, it will likely come down to whether ANO + SPD is bigger than SPOLU + PiratiStan.

[Diouf]

I assume that Prague will give strong results for the Pirates and SPOLU. ANO could poll 3rd this time in the capital.

Yes, after the first tiny batch from Prague it's SPOLU 42.2%, PiratiStan 23.4% and ANO 15.7%.
Would have thought the Pirates would be higher, but is perhaps because one still needs to mark it down along their general fall in polls.

[Diouf]

Seems fairly certain that KSCM isn't making it. Doing the worst of the three in the rest of the country, and really poor in Prague so far.

[Diouf]

Another projection

https://twitter.com/CNNPrima/status/1446832914394763266

4.99% !!!

[Diouf]

Prague is 7,5% counted, and Malacova is keeping CSSD on 4.1%, the best of the three among the threshold. Will be very tight.

[Diouf]

With CSSD below the threshold, the seat distribution is  currently 100 vs. 100. But with so much of Prague left to count, it should be a realtively clear advantage for SPOLU + PiratiStan at the end.

[Diouf]

Something weird is happening with the open list preferential votes for PirStan. They're currently projected at 35 seats but Pirates will only take 2 of them!!!! STAN takes the rest (33). In 2017 STAN only won 6 seats while Pirati got 22.

Young Pirate voters not realizing the importance of preference with the STAN voters voting heavily on the locally well-known candidates? Seems really unprofessional if the Pirates hadn't seen this coming or tried to mitigate it. Perhaps it will help a bit somewhere if the urban vote is lacking, and they have more prefence votes there.

[Diouf]

In SPOLU, the seat distribution is currently

ODS 32 (+7)
KDU-CSL 22 (+12)
TOP 09 13 (+6)

[Diouf]

A big part is of course also the general meltdown of Pirates, and even Rakusan being part of the Superdebate. He seems very popular and so far leads the personal vote list, ahead of Babis. Bartos nowhere to be seen in the top.

[Diouf]

Hmm, CT just showed a graphic which seemed to say Pirates 19 and STAN 17. So I wonder if they are wrong or there is something missing from the Idnes calculation so far.

[Diouf]

Tomio Okamura's big brother, Hayato, currently looks like he will be elected for KDU-CSL in Prague. He was only 15th on the SPOLU list, but looks like getting enough preference votes to be elected.

[Diouf]

The high turnout in Prague, currently at 69.43%, pushing up the national turnout to 65.06%. The highest turnout since 1998. And probably a significant part of giving SPOLU + PiratiSTAN a fairly comfortable majority in the end.

[Diouf]

PŘÍSAHA just surpassed ČSSD. Diouf, do you think that SPOLU could surpass ANO? Every time there's a new update, the margin becomes narrower and narrower.

Yes, the predictions I see have SPOLU ca 0.5% around in the end.

[Diouf]

Hamacek resigning as CSSD leader and Filip will also likely be gone. Kind of embarrassing for both parties that they seem like ending behind Prisaha,

[Diouf]

Idnes still has STAN on 34 seats and the Pirates on 4.

Yeah, it seemed like it was just an outdated graphic from CT24, or on based on candidates position on the lists and not personal votes.

Idnes has this comment: "There is disillusionment and disappointment in the jihlavském campaign headquarters of the Pirates and STAN coalition. The pirate part of the coalition was surprised by how the STAN candidates jumped them massively in the elections thanks to voter preferences. "I did not expect such a scenario," said blanka Lednická from Pirates. She didn't make it to the House either. Stan's top players are no longer on the campaign staff, they went to Prague to celebrate. Only the Pirates remained at the scene."

Bartos said that, considering the result, they are considering a common group in parliament.

[Diouf]

Babis said talks with the President about the post-election government will start on Wednesday. He still says he wants to be in government and wants to talk with SPOLU about this. Zeman will probably try what he can to sabotage SPOLU - PiratiSTAN, but I'm guessing we will soon see talks start between the two coalitions.

[Diouf]

50/200 elected MP are women. The highest proportion ever, beating the previous record of 44 from 2010 and 2017.