2013 Czech Presidential Election

[GMantis]

Nice to see both the ODS and TOP09 candidates in single digits.

[GMantis]

I suspect Zemen is backed by more conservative voters and Fischer is backed by more leftish ones. That's a total guess though. Can anyone confirm?

Certainly not, as the top two conservative parties are running  their own candidates, who even together barely gather 10%. Also Zeman runs a breakaway fraction of the Social Democrats, so he would hardly be first choice for the rightists, even if he shares some of their bizarre ideas, like on Global warming.

[GMantis]

Here are the results by district:

Anyone got results by Region?

http://www.volby.cz/pls/prez2013/pe3?xjazyk=EN

Schwarzenberg got 43% in Prague 0_o

No surprise there, big cities usually vote strongly for rightist parties in Eastern Europe. The exception in the Czech Republic seems to be Moravia and Silesia, where even the large cities seem to vote for the socialists.

[GMantis]

This is one of the rare cases where my sympathies lie with the right-wing candidate. Zeman not only is an opponent of global warming, but his asinine behavior strongly recall the vile prime minister my country is currently saddled with. Schwarzenberg, on the other hand, seems to be a man of integrity and he has led the generally saner part of the current right-wing coalition, so he seems much more suited for the mostly ceremonial post of president.

[GMantis]

I am not sure that the Sudeten-Gernans were the decisive issue. It seems to me that Zeman in particular won Slovakia, and the mining areas in the North (the latter is not surprising for a Social Democrat), Schwarzenberg actually did quite well in some of the areas formerly settled by Sudetendeutsche. Especially the North-East (Liberec) area in the CZ-D-PL Triangle stands out as a non-large city Schwarzenerg stronghold.

A color-scaled map of margins might be helpful to access regional effects in more detail.
[/quote]
Slovakia?! You must mean Moravia, where the left-wing parties do very well in general (except Brno). The Sudetenland is more mixed, with right-wingers strong in the north and south and left-wingers in the west. This time though, the region was very strong for Zeman, so Schwarzenberg's remarks must have had some effect. The exception is the area around Liberec (incidentally it's the fifth largest city in Czechia, so I wouldn't call it small), which is usually a right-wing stronghold, but it also had some of the the highest percentages for Schwarzenberg's party at the last parliamentary election. This area is apparently one of the few with a remaining German minority, so maybe that's why they're more receptive to him.