Publication details
Volby do Poslanecké sněmovny v roce 2017
| Title in English | Elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2017 |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Monograph |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Attached files | |
| Description | Summary The most recent elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic took place in 2017 in an unsettled and tense atmosphere, mainly because of the personality of Andrej Babiš, the chairman of ANO. The results of the election brought several remarkable and surprising moments. A record number of political parties – nine – were able to cross the electoral threshold (set at 5 % of vote): ANO, ODS, The Pirates, SPD, KSČM, ČSSD, KDU-ČSL, TOP 09 and STAN. It was no surprise that Babiš’s ANO won the election by a considerable margin – the party attracted almost three times more votes than the party that placed second, ODS. For the other parties, the wait for their final results was quite dramatic. Three parties (KDU-ČSL, TOP 09 and STAN) polled very close to the electoral threshold and until the last moments of counting, it was not clear if they would be able to cross the 5% mark. For KSČM, it was the worst result in the history of the party (when we take the history of its predecessor, KSČ, into consideration, it was the worst result since 1921). Members of ČSSD must have been even more disappointed: the drop in voters’ support was enormous; we have to remember that ČSSD was part of the previous government, which was considered a successful coalition. However, most of the credit went to Andrej Babiš and ANO. Campaigning preceding the election was conspicuous and intensive. Under the new rules (i.e. a ban on billboards on motorways and first-class roads, spending limits, a brand new bureau whose task was to oversee the funding of political parties, campaigns included), the campaign was about how strong ANO would eventually be; who would be the strongest party of the opposition; and who would be able (and willing) to form a government with Babiš. This book represents a comprehensive study of the 2017 elections and discusses many details that are important for understanding all events and processes that led to these election results. Firstly, Miloš Gregor and Peter Dvořák look back at the most important political events of the previous election cycle (2013-2017) and discuss the development of the Czech party system during that period. Then, Otto Eibl and Veronika Dvořáková offer both quantitative and qualitative analysis of electoral manifestos. In the quantitative part of their chapter, they use the MARPOR framework; qualitatively they focus on the three main areas which cause political conflict in the Czech Republic as identified by Linek, Chytilek and Eibl in 2016. A substantive part of the book comprises a detailed description and analysis of the election campaigns. Miloš Gregor and Otto Eibl (with the help of Master’s students at the Department of Political Science of Masaryk University) carried out systematic research into the communication and marketing activities of the parties. This part is divided into two sections. In the first, the authors describe the basic features and characteristics of the (mostly offline) campaigns; in the second, they focus on the presence of the parties in online media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube). In the following chapter, Peter Spáč analyses the candidate lists and looks for differences in their composition across the parties that contested the elections. Veronika Dostálová and Vlastimil Havlík continue with an analysis of voters of particular parties. In their research, they draw conclusions from a special data set from the research ‘Election study 2017’, which was co-financed and partially designed by members of the Department of Political Science. In the chapter that follows, Petr Voda examines the results from the viewpoint of electoral geography and identifies where the various parties scored best. The book is concluded by a chapter written by Jakub Šedo who considers how different the outcomes of the elections would have been if other electoral rules were used. |
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