Celebrations took place in ANO and the Pirates. Communist Enough! got a spanking, the government's plan is in the stars
The ANO movement won the elections by a significant margin. 6 electoral groups made it into the lower house. There are several variants of the government coalition. The leader of the victorious ANO movement announced in a post-election statement that he would seek support for a one-color government with the backing of the SPD and Motorists, who became the leap voucher of the elections and a new party in the lower house. The coalition of communists, SocDem, and other parties collapsed despite pre-election polls. The Pirates were satisfied with the election results, and a member of the Greens will return to the Chamber of Deputies on their candidate lists.
"We have immense joy. That's what we strived for after November. Free elections. The ANO movement has achieved a historic result, we have great numbers, great numbers in the history of elections. It is a result of the team, we have a great team. It was a ride. I thank the PR team, in the last 7 days we had 47 million views and hundreds of thousands of likes. Let's hope a government is formed that will really work hard. For me, this is the absolute pinnacle of my political career. I hoped for 30%, our survey indicated 26, it's awesome,"
It was stated in the post-election speech by Andrej Babiš, leader of the ANO movement.
I look forward to the meeting with the president. We will definitely negotiate with SPD and Motorists. We will strive for a single-colour government. I will come to the president with a solution in accordance with European and Czech laws... I was the leader, the voters want me as prime minister.
The winning party garnered around 34.7% and significantly surpassed the former leader of the government, the coalition together with a gain of about 23.2% votes. According to preliminary results, ANO could create a two-party coalition only with ODS or with STAN. Theoretically, it is possible to form a governing majority by combining the former five-party government with the Motorists, however, the representatives of the Motorist refuse to cooperate with the former government in discussions before the final tally of votes.
"Congratulations to the winner of the elections, Andrej Babiš. My goal was to once again assemble a democratic government on the current blueprint, but it is clear that this will not be possible according to the election results. The Spolu coalition bore the main burden of the crises that the Czech Republic went through. We managed the consolidation package, pension reform, huge investments, we fulfilled the main promise. We put the Czech Republic together. Economic growth is greater than in Austria and Germany, we are building highways faster than in Poland. The result of the government parties is slightly better than in 2021, that is a unique result after so many crises. However, the result is different, it is clear, and it needs to be democratically accepted,"
Current Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) commented on the election results, describing the overall outcome, which surpassed polls, as "interesting".
Compared to the polls, the unacknowledged coalition Stačilo failed, not making it into the Chamber of Deputies, even though pre-election surveys predicted a result safely over the 5% threshold. The exact opposite was true for the Motorists, who succeeded with just under 6.8 % of votes. MEP Filip Turek for the Motorists (non-affiliated) appreciated that female voters drew hearts instead of preference circles.
Great enthusiasm prevailed in the Pirates' camp, who gave up several places on the candidate lists to politicians from the Green Party, who will have their representation in the Parliament for the second time in history.
"The election result is not good news for our country, we will be a barrier against extremism," said Zdeněk Hřib, the leader of the Pirates, in an otherwise enthusiastic post-election speech. "We are ahead of SPD! Thank you," Hřib summarised briefly on X, one of the reasons why the Pirates celebrated the gain of 18 mandates (at the time of the speech he was expecting only 17 MPs).
The surprising result was the result of 7.8% votes for SPD. Surveys predicted a comfortable double-digit result for the party of Tomio Okamura. In the election headquarters, the party vice-chairman Radim Fiala stated that the poor result of the party will not lead to an effort of SPD to sit in the government, but they will remain open to support a single-color government of ANO.
The third place was occupied by the STAN movement and with a gain of over 11% of the votes, it will have 22 representatives in the lower chamber of Parliament. Participation in the elections was record-breaking, reaching 68.89% of votes.
