Czech Senate election, 2018

Last updated March 22, 2019

Senate elections were held in the Czech Republic on 5 and 6 October 2018 alongside municipal elections, with a second round held on 12 and 13 October 2018. The Conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS) won the election with 10 seats. Governing parties ANO 2011 and the Czech Social Democratic Party were heavily defeated, receiving only 1 seat each. The Communist Party lost its last seat in the Senate. The election was considered the first major win for the opposition to Andrej Babiš' Cabinet. Commentators including Josef Kopecký also noted ODS confirmed their position as the main opposition party, ahead of the Czech Pirate Party.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]. The last remaining senator for KSČM, Václav Homolka, had lost re-election, marking the first time in the history of Czech Republic, when the Communists had completely lost representation in one of the Chambers of Czech Parliament.

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy promoting traditional social institutions in the context of culture and civilization. The central tenets of conservatism include tradition, human imperfection, hierarchy, authority, and property rights. Conservatives seek to preserve a range of institutions such as monarchy, religion, parliamentary government, and property rights, with the aim of emphasizing social stability and continuity. The more extreme elements—reactionaries—oppose modernism and seek a return to "the way things were".

The Civic Democratic Party is a liberal-conservative political party in the Czech Republic. It holds 25 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and is the second strongest party following the 2017 election.

Electoral system

One-third of the 81-member Senate is elected every two years, giving Senators six year terms. Members of the Senate are elected in single-member constituencies using the two-round system.^[5]

The two-round system is a voting method used to elect a single winner, where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate. However, if no candidate receives the required number of votes, then those candidates having less than a certain proportion of the votes, or all but the two candidates receiving the most votes, are eliminated, and a second round of voting is held.

Composition of contested seats prior to the elections

	Ideology	Leader	Seats
Czech Social Democratic Party	Social democracy	Jan Hamáček	13 / 27
Civic Democratic Party	Conservatism	Petr Fiala	4 / 27
KDU-ČSL	Christian democracy	Pavel Bělobrádek	2 / 27
Mayors and Independents	Localism	Petr Gazdík	2 / 27
Independents			2 / 27
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia	Communism	Vojtěch Filip	1 / 27
Pirates	Pirate politics	Ivan Bartoš	1 / 27
Green Party	Green politics	Petr Štěpánek	1 / 27

List of contested districts

District	Incumbent	Standing for reelection
2 - Sokolov	Zdeněk Berka (ČSSD)	No
5- Chomutov	Václav Homolka (KSČM)	Yes
8 - Rokycany	Milada Emmerová (ČSSD)	Yes
11 - Domažlice	Jan Látka (ČSSD)	Yes
14 - České Budějovice	Jiří Šesták (STAN)	Yes
17 - Prague 12	Tomáš Grulich (ODS)	No
20 - Prague 4	Eva Syková (ČSSD)	Yes
23 - Prague 8	Daniela Filipiová (ODS)	No
26 - Prague 2	Libor Michálek (Piráti)	Yes
29 - Litoměřice	Hassan Mezian (ČSSD)	No
32 - Teplice	Jaroslav Kubera (ODS)	Yes
35 - Jablonec nad Nisou	Jaroslav Zeman (ODS)	Yes
38 - Mladá Boleslav	Jaromír Jermář (ČSSD)	No
41 - Benešov	Luděk Jeništa (TOP 09)	No
44 - Chrudim	Jan Veleba (SPOZ)	No
47 - Mladá Boleslav	Lubomír Franc (ČSSD)	No
50 - Svitavy	Radko Martínek (ČSSD)	No
53 - Třebíč	František Bublan (ČSSD)	No
56 - Břeclav	Jan Hajda (ČSSD)	Deceased prior to election

Campaign

The Senate election campaign ran parallel to the campaign for the municipal elections.^[6]

ANO 2011 launched their campaign on 3 September 2018. Babiš said that ANO was offering many highly-qualified candidates, including Ivan Pilný and Eva Syková.^[7]

ANO 2011 is a centrist, populist political party in the Czech Republic founded by Andrej Babiš, the second-richest person in the Czech Republic, owner of the Agrofert conglomerate, and Mafra media group. It is based on the former movement Action of Dissatisfied Citizens. "Ano" means "yes" in Czech.

Ivan Pilný is a Czech politician and former Microsoft executive who briefly served as Finance Minister of the Czech Republic from 24 May 2017 to 13 December 2017. From 2013 to 2017 Pilný was a member of the Chamber of Deputies (MP).

Eva Syková is a Czech neuroscientist whose research focused on the origins, mechanisms and maintenance of ionic and volume homeostasis in the CNS and the role of extrasynaptic transmission, spinal cord injury. She is currently leading several clinical studies, including a Phase I/II study in patients with spinal cord injury as well as ongoing clinical studies of patients with ALS and ischemic leg injury. She was director of Institute of Experimental Medicine and the head of the Center for Cell Therapy and Tissue Repair at Charles University in Prague. Eva Sykova is author of 421 publications and co-holder of 7 patents with an H-index of 50.

The Czech Social Democratic Party launched their campaign on 5 September 2018, focused on social issues.^{[ which? ]}^[8]

The Czech Social Democratic Party is a social-democratic political party in the Czech Republic. It holds 15 seats in the Chamber of Deputies following the 2017 legislative election, losing 35 seats. The party has been led by Jan Hamáček since 2018. It has been a junior coalition party within a minority cabinet since June 2018, and was a senior coalition party from 1998 to 2006 and from 2013 to 2017.

The Civic Democratic Party (ODS) launched their campaign on 7 September 2018. Petr Fiala stated that the election would be a conflict of two worlds, with ODS representing the world of experienced candidates and ANO 2011 representing the world of repeated restarts.^[9]

Petr Fiala is a Czech politician, political scientist and university professor who has been Leader of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) since 2014. He has served as Member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2013. From 2012 to 2013 Fiala was Minister of Education, Youth and Sports in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Petr Nečas and Rector of Masaryk University in Brno.

Election forecast

Media	Date	ANO	ODS	Piráti	SPD	KSČM	ČSSD	KDU–ČSL	TOP 09	STAN	Others	Notes
Media	Date										Others	Notes
Election	12–13 Oct 2018	1	10	1	0	0	1	2	1	5	6

Referendum^[10]^[11]^[12]	2 Oct 2018	5	5	1	0	1	3	4	1	4	4
Hospodářské noviny^[13]	30 Sep 2018	5	3	1	0	0	4	4	1	4	5	based on betting odds

Campaign finances

Party	Money Spent	Source
ANO 2011	130,000,000 CZK	^[14]
Civic Democratic Party	40,000,000 CZK	^[14]
Czech Social Democratic Party	35,000,000 CZK	^[14]
Freedom and Direct Democracy	30,000,000 CZK	^[14]
Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party	26,000,000 CZK	^[14]
TOP 09	20,000,000 CZK	^[14]
Mayors and Independents	17,500,000 CZK	^[14]
Czech Pirate Party	14,000,000 CZK	^[14]
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia	11,500,000 CZK	^[14]

Results

The Civic Democratic Party (ODS) received most support in the first round with 11 runner-ups. ANO 2011 had 10 runner-upss^[15]

Party^{[n 1]}		First round			Second round			Seat totals

Party^{[n 1]}		Votes	%	Seats	Votes	%	Seats	Won	Not up	Total	+/–
	Civic Democratic Party	163,630	15.02	0	116,376	27.86	10	10	6	16	+7
	ANO 2011	147,477	13.54	0	57,500	13.75	1	1	6	7	0
	Czech Social Democratic Party	100,478	9.22	0	33,887	8.10	1	1	12	13	-12
	Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party	99,383	9.12	1	34,833	8.33	1	2	14	16	+2
	Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia	80,371	7.38	0	3,578	0.86	0	0	0	0	-1
	Mayors and Independents	79,025	7.25	1	47,317	11.31	4	5	5	10	+5
	Freedom and Direct Democracy	70,110	6.44	0	–	–	–	0	0	0	0
	Czech Pirate Party	66,281	6.08	0	17,528	4.20	1	1	0	1	0
	TOP 09	41,980	3.85	0	22,580	5.40	1	1	2	3	+1
	Senator 21	33,860	3.11	0	24,250	5.80	1	1	5	6
	Marek Hilšer for Senate	15,045	1.38	0	11,903	2.85	1	1	0	1	+1
	Freeholder Party of the Czech Republic	12,265	1.13	0	7,176	1.72	0	0	1	1	0
	For Health	11,180	1.03	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Realists	8,407	0.77	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Party of Common Sense	7,186	0.66	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Ostravak	6,178	0.57	0	4,906	1.17	1	1	0	1
	Movement for Prague 11	4,980	0.46	0	–	–	–	0	1	1
	New Future for Liberec Region	4,744	0.44	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	SNK European Democrats	4,446	0.41	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Czech National Social Party	4,438	0.41	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Pévéčko	3,425	0.31	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Czech Sovereignty	3,300	0.30	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Party of Civic Rights	3,286	0.30	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Party of Free Citizens	2,884	0.26	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Moravian Country Movement	2,641	0.24	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Ordinary Citizens	2,010	0.18	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Green Party	1,818	0.17	0	–	–	–	0	1	1	-1
	Moravian and Silesian Pirate Party	1,789	0.16	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Moravané	1,484	0.14	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Koruna Česká	1,443	0.13	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Patriots of the Czech Republic	1,369	0.13	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	NE-VOLIM	1,346	0.12	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Order of Nation	1,172	0.11	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	INDEPENDENTS	1,061	0.10	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Club of Committed Non-Party Members	1,001	0.09	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Alternative for Czechia 2017	794	0.07	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Party of State of Direct Democracy	499	0.05	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Citizens of the Czech Republic	491	0.05	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Alliance of National Forces	390	0.04	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Enough is Enough	258	0.02	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Roma Democratic Party	216	0.02	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Nation Together	41	0.00	0	–	–	–	0	0	0
	Independents	95,507	8.76	0	35,938	8.59	3	3	3	6	+4
	Invalid/blank votes	46,573	–	–	2,151	–	–	–	–	–	–
Total		1,136,262	100	2	419,923	100	25	27	54	81	0
Registered voters/turnout		2,743,745	41.41	–	2,547,488	16.48	–	–	–	–	–
Source: Volby

Notes

↑ Name of "nominating party" (navrhující strana).

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References

↑ ",Fiasko vládních stran.' Světová média si všímají vítězství ODS i porážky KSČM". Lidovky.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 13 October 2018.
↑ Editorial, Reuters. "Czech opposition scores win in Senate elections". U.S. Retrieved 13 October 2018.
↑ "Conservative opposition party wins Czech Senate election". miamiherald. Retrieved 13 October 2018.
↑ "ANALÝZA: Facka pro obě vládní strany a ODS je na cestě vzhůru". iDNES.cz. 13 October 2018. Retrieved 13 October 2018.
↑ Electoral system IPU
↑ "Souběh voleb komplikuje financování kampaní. Senátoři se mohou schovat za komunální kampaň - E15.cz". E15.cz. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
↑ ""Uděláme Česko bohatší." ANO startuje kampaň. Senát nám nikdy moc nešel, přiznal Babiš". EuroZprávy.cz. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
↑ "ČSSD zahájila kampaň. Chce zkrátit pracovní týden a bránit hranice". Parlamentní Listy. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
↑ "Volby budou střetem dvou světů, řekl na startu kampaně lídr ODS Fiala". Novinky.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 7 October 2018.
↑ "Analýza senátních voleb 1: Do Senátu zřejmě míří Hilšer, Drahoš i Wagenknecht - Deník Referendum". denikreferendum.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 29 November 2018.
↑ "Analýza senátních voleb 2: Mnozí sociální demokraté neobhajují své mandáty - Deník Referendum". denikreferendum.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 29 November 2018.
↑ "Analýza senátních voleb 3: Na Moravě budou nejsilnější lidovci - Deník Referendum". denikreferendum.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 29 November 2018.
↑ "Hlavními favority senátních voleb jsou podle bookmakerů Čunek, Fischer nebo Kubera. Velkou šanci na úspěch mají i Drahoš a Bek". Hospodářské noviny (in Czech). 30 September 2018. Retrieved 29 November 2018.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Ve výdajích na kampaň pro letošní komunální a senátní volby vede s předstihem ANO". Hospodářské noviny (IHNED.cz) (in Czech). 3 October 2018. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
↑ "Finále senátních voleb: ODS zřejmě zvítězí, převálcuje ANO, naznačuje analýza". EuroZprávy.cz. Retrieved 7 October 2018.

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[16] Name of "nominating party" (navrhující strana).

[,Fiasko_vládních_stran.‘_Světová_média_si_všímají_vítězství_ODS_i_porážky_KSČM-1] ",Fiasko vládních stran.' Světová média si všímají vítězství ODS i porážky KSČM". Lidovky.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 13 October 2018.

[Czech_opposition_scores_win_in_Senate_elections-2] Editorial, Reuters. "Czech opposition scores win in Senate elections". U.S. Retrieved 13 October 2018.

[Conservative_opposition_party_wins_Czech_Senate_election-3] "Conservative opposition party wins Czech Senate election". miamiherald. Retrieved 13 October 2018.

[ANALÝZA:_Facka_pro_obě_vládní_strany_a_ODS_je_na_cestě_vzhůru-4] "ANALÝZA: Facka pro obě vládní strany a ODS je na cestě vzhůru". iDNES.cz. 13 October 2018. Retrieved 13 October 2018.

[5] Electoral system IPU

[Souběh_voleb_komplikuje_financování_kampaní._Senátoři_se_mohou_schovat_za_komunální_kampaň_-_E15.cz-6] "Souběh voleb komplikuje financování kampaní. Senátoři se mohou schovat za komunální kampaň - E15.cz". E15.cz. Retrieved 7 October 2018.

["Uděláme_Česko_bohatší."_ANO_startuje_kampaň._Senát_nám_nikdy_moc_nešel,_přiznal_Babiš-7] ""Uděláme Česko bohatší." ANO startuje kampaň. Senát nám nikdy moc nešel, přiznal Babiš". EuroZprávy.cz. Retrieved 7 October 2018.

[ČSSD_zahájila_kampaň._Chce_zkrátit_pracovní_týden_a_bránit_hranice-8] "ČSSD zahájila kampaň. Chce zkrátit pracovní týden a bránit hranice". Parlamentní Listy. Retrieved 7 October 2018.

[Volby_budou_střetem_dvou_světů,_řekl_na_startu_kampaně_lídr_ODS_Fiala-9] "Volby budou střetem dvou světů, řekl na startu kampaně lídr ODS Fiala". Novinky.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 7 October 2018.

[Analýza_senátních_voleb_1:_Do_Senátu_zřejmě_míří_Hilšer,_Drahoš_i_Wagenknecht_-_Deník_Referendum-10] "Analýza senátních voleb 1: Do Senátu zřejmě míří Hilšer, Drahoš i Wagenknecht - Deník Referendum". denikreferendum.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 29 November 2018.

[Analýza_senátních_voleb_2:_Mnozí_sociální_demokraté_neobhajují_své_mandáty_-_Deník_Referendum-11] "Analýza senátních voleb 2: Mnozí sociální demokraté neobhajují své mandáty - Deník Referendum". denikreferendum.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 29 November 2018.

[Analýza_senátních_voleb_3:_Na_Moravě_budou_nejsilnější_lidovci_-_Deník_Referendum-12] "Analýza senátních voleb 3: Na Moravě budou nejsilnější lidovci - Deník Referendum". denikreferendum.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 29 November 2018.

[Hlavními_favority_senátních_voleb_jsou_podle_bookmakerů_Čunek,_Fischer_nebo_Kubera._Velkou_šanci_na_úspěch_mají_i_Drahoš_a_Bek-13] "Hlavními favority senátních voleb jsou podle bookmakerů Čunek, Fischer nebo Kubera. Velkou šanci na úspěch mají i Drahoš a Bek". Hospodářské noviny (in Czech). 30 September 2018. Retrieved 29 November 2018.

[Ve_výdajích_na_kampaň_pro_letošní_komunální_a_senátní_volby_vede_s_předstihem_ANO-14] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Ve výdajích na kampaň pro letošní komunální a senátní volby vede s předstihem ANO". Hospodářské noviny (IHNED.cz) (in Czech). 3 October 2018. Retrieved 7 October 2018.

[Finále_senátních_voleb:_ODS_zřejmě_zvítězí,_převálcuje_ANO,_naznačuje_analýza-15] "Finále senátních voleb: ODS zřejmě zvítězí, převálcuje ANO, naznačuje analýza". EuroZprávy.cz. Retrieved 7 October 2018.

v t e Elections and referendums in the Czech Republic
Presidential elections	2013 2018 Next
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Senate elections	1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 by-elections
Regional elections	2000 2004 2008 2012 2016
Municipal elections	1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018
European elections	2004 2009 2014 2019
Referendums	2003
See also: Elections in Austria-Hungary Czechoslovakia Czechoslovak presidential election Indirect presidential elections Opinion polling