The Parliamentary Election in the Czech Republic, May 2010
238 Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 223–244 The parliamentary election in the Czech Republic, May 2010 Mary Stegmaier a,*, Klára Vlachová b,1 a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA b Institute of Sociology AS CR, Jilská 1, 110 00, Praha 1, Czech Republic article info Article history: Received 8 October 2010 Accepted 13 January 2011 The May 28 – 29, 2010 Czech parliamentary elections the polls - 36% and 31.5% respectively. The Communists resulted in a dramatic upheaval to what had been a rela- (16%), Greens (7%), and the KDU-CSL (5%) were the only tively stable political landscape. The Christian Democratic other parties generating enough support to surpass the 5% Party (KDU-CSL) and the Green Party failed to reach the 5% electoral threshold.3 electoral threshold while two new parties, TOP 09 and After the governing coalition failed to win parliamen- Public Affairs, burst onto the scene with surprising strength. tary support in the March 2009 vote, a caretaker govern- The two pillars of the party system, the Civic Democrats ment of experts, led by Jan Fischer, who had been serving as (ODS) and the Social Democrats (CSSD), lost substantial the President of the Czech Statistical Office, governed with support. Only the Communist Party (KSCM) maintained its support from the ODS and CSSD. The two parties agreed to standing by winning 26 of 200 seats. hold early parliamentary elections instead of waiting until The major shake-up broke the pattern of bare majority the end of the regular 4-year term (June 2010).
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