The populist ANO party of billionaire ex-premier Andrej Babis registered a decisive victory in the Czech regional elections at the weekend, confirming the picture shown by its dominance in the national opinion polls and its victory in the elections to the European Parliament in June.

ANO won in 10 of the 13 regions while increasing its regional deputies by 114 from the 178 that it had secured in the previous regional elections in 2020 to 292. There are 685 deputies in the regional governments in total.

“We think the election outcome is the result of our intensive work in opposition,” Babis stated, calling it “teamwork”, with ANO’s deputy chair Karel Havlicek standing next to him.  

Babis thanked ANO’s voters in his election results speech, pointing out that his party managed to win the Stredocesky region (Central Bohemia) that surrounds Prague, which has  long opposed ANO, and the party fared well also in the first round of the Senate elections, which were held in parallel.  

The result is “a signal for the government for the upcoming parliamentary elections next year as to where and to which parts of our land more attention should be paid,” Czech President Petr Pavel was quoted as saying by the Czech Press Agency (CTK).

Pavel beat Babis head-on in the presidential elections last January. He openly warned during the fierce campaign that Babis in power would attempt to steer the country into the illiberal waters pursued by Hungary under its radical right-wing leader Viktor Orban. In June Babis made a sharp turn to the far-right when he co-founded “Patriots for Europe” – now the third strongest EP fraction – along with Orban and Austria’s far-right FPO leader Herbert Kickl.

In some poorer regions, ANO’s popularity was close to 50%. In the Moravskoslezky (Moravian-Silesian) region, ANO won with 47.22% – way ahead of the second-placed list led by the centrist Mayor and Independents party with 14.67% – and can form the regional government by itself.

A similar situation is in the Karlovarsky (Carlsbad) region, where ANO won with 44.03%, while in the Ustecky region, it won with 39.47%, narrowly missing the majority in the regional government by two deputies. All three regions are among the poorest in the country with a host of unresolved social issues stalling their development, including a not very successful transition from the declining coal mining industry.   

The ruling coalition's leading party, the neoliberal ODS of Prime Minister Petr Fiala and STAN also managed to register mild gains in the regions, increasing their deputies by seven to 106 and by four to 73 respectively.

Although ANO’s victory was widely expected, the poor performance of the governing parties was underscored by a major debacle of the liberal Pirate Party, which entered the election weekend as the third-strongest party in the regions with 99 deputies, only to be left with a mere three deputies countrywide and only in one of the regions, the Plzensky (Pilsen) region.

The Pirates have called a party summit and party leader Ivan Bartos has resigned.  Speculations have intensified that a new party leader could leave Fiala’s centre-right cabinet.

“It would not take down the cabinet,” political analyst Josef Mlejnek from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University, was quoted as saying by CTK, recalling that the Pirates were reduced to a mere four legislators in the parliament and, if they departed, Fiala’s cabinet could still govern with a majority of 104 legislators.

However, “in the future, this could be a problem for the ruling coalition parties” if Pirates did not make it to the parliament, as without the Pirates, government parties “could hardly form the next coalition”, Mlejnek also said. The Pirate Party popularity has steadily oscillated around 10% in the national polls, and the regional elections did not include the capital and the country’s most populous city, Prague, which is a large base of liberal and pro-EU voters.

The Pirate Party debacle was further underscored by the first round of Senate voting, which saw Lukas Wagenknecht, a well-known anti-corruption campaigner who was instrumental in opening an ongoing case against Babis over embezzlement of EU funds, failing to progress to the second round in his district of Prague 8. Zdenek Kucera of ANO narrowly edged out Wagenknecht, setting up a runoff with Vladimira Ludkova of the ODS.

ANO’s Jana Mrackova Vildumetzova secured a Senate seat already in the first round in the district of Sokolov in the Carlsbad region, as did ANO’s Martin Bednar in the southern district of Ostrava, the capital of the struggling Moravian-Silesian region. Another sixteen ANO candidates progressed to the second round held in two weeks in what could turn out to be a historic breakthrough for ANO in the Senate. Even if they all succeeded, which is unlikely, it would not affect the majority support Fiala’s cabinet enjoys in the overwhelmingly centre-right Senate. 

A small consolation for government parties could be the performance of smaller far-right and radical nationalist parties, which registered gains thanks to joint lists they formed but not as major gains as feared ahead of the elections.

The STACILO! [It was Enough!] list led by unreformed Kremlin-leaning Czech Communist Party (KSCM) will have deputies in 11 regions after attuning its already hard nationalist rhetoric to the far-right spectrum, but in most cases it crossed the 5% threshold only narrowly.

Far-right SPD of Tomio Okamura, which, besides ANO, is the only opposition party in the national parliament, also made gains and will be now represented in 12 regions, but the rivalling anti-EU Prisaha [Pledge] party failed to secure any deputies.   

The regional elections also registered the second lowest voter turnout on record with a mere 33.23% of eligible voters casting votes. Voter participation in the first round of the Senate elections was even lower at 30.47% although this is a long-term phenomon - despite the influence the Senate wields over the country's legislation, it is repeatedly registering the lowest voter turnouts out of all elections in Czechia.