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Voting has ended in Czechia’s regional and Senate elections. Polling stations closed at 2pm on Saturday and preliminary results are expected in the early evening.

The turnout in the elections varied in the different regions, from 1 percent to 40 percent of the electorate, according to information provided to the CTK news agency by election commissions.

There was a very low turnout in many of the hardest-hit municipalities, with some exceptions. In the town of Krnov, which was severely damaged by floods, only about a tenth of voters came to cast their ballot. On the other hand, in Opava, which also sustained serious damage, the turnout was as high as 40 percent.

In some places, voter turnout was even higher than at the same time during the last regional elections, while in others it was lower.

In the 2020 regional elections voter turnout was 37.9 percent. In the last Senate elections in 2022, 42.6 percent of voters cast their ballot.

Czechs cast their ballot in elections to regional councils in 13 regions, exempting Prague, and elections to a third of the Senate, which take place every six years.

Parties, movements or coalitions must reach a threshold of five per cent to get seats on regional councils. Within each constituency, seats are allocated by a modified proportional electoral system by the D'Hondt method.

In the Senate elections, 169 candidates are contesting 27 seats in the upper chamber.  A second round of voting in the Senate elections will take place next weekend for contestants who fail to win more that 50 percent of the vote, with the two candidates with the highest number of votes from the first round advancing to the second.

The regional elections, in which the opposition party ANO is seeking to defend its victory from four years ago, are seen as a key test of the party’s popularity ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.

Meanwhile, the ruling Civic Democratic Party is aiming to retain its position as the strongest faction in the Senate, and defend its three governor posts in the regions.

A flash poll conducted by the STEM agency for Prima CNN has indicated that the majority of Czechs are satisfied with the government’s response to the floods. Seventeen percent of respondents said the government responded “very well”, 43 percent said it did “relatively well”. Twenty-five percent of respondents said the government’s response was “inadequate” and 15 percent of respondents rated it as “poor”. Regional governments got high praise, with 89 percent of respondents saying they had performed well or very well.

The army has started erecting temporary bridges in the flood-ravaged parts of Moravia-Silesia in order to restore local infrastructure and facilitate clean-up work. Some villages were literally torn in two when the raging current swept bridges and footbridges away, leaving inhabitants on one side cut off from provisions and services. Special army teams have been driving around Jesenice, Ostrava and Opava,  looking for places where temporary bridges could be built, Colonel Pavel Maňas, head of the Department of Engineering Technologies at the University of Defence, told the ctk news agency.  He said work had already started on a number of replacements, but it was not yet possible to say how many bridges would be built and where, because the plans must be consulted with the respective municipalities. The army has sent more than five hundred soldiers and almost a hundred pieces of heavy equipment to the affected areas since the floods began.

A Czech national disrupted the opening of the exhibition Who I Am? by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in Bologna, Italy, when he smashed one of the exhibited works. The man reportedly destroyed a porcelain cube placed at the entrance to the exhibition. According to the Italian press, the perpetrator is a well-known provocateur who lives in Florence and has in the past similarly damaged artworks and monuments by famous artists. He was apprehended by the organizers and handed over to the police. According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, he will be investigated for destroying a work of art. In Italy, this carries a penalty of between two and five years in prison and a fine of between 2,500 and 15,000 euros.  The man is known, especially in Florence, for his eccentric acts. In 2012, he covered the walls of the former convent of St Ursula in the city centre with fake dollar bills. In 2018, he destroyed a painting of Serbian artist Marina Abramovic and in 2022, he painted a statue in the centre of Florence in the Ukrainian national colours.