Social Democrats second on popularity ladder

The Social Democratic Party, the senior party in the ruling coalition, has made it to second place on the popularity ladder, an opinion poll suggests. According to the results of the poll, which was conducted by the CVVM agency in May, the opposition right-of-centre Civic Democrats continue to be in the lead with 30%, followed by the Social Democrats with 16%, and the Communists, who had enjoyed second place in preceding months, with 14.5%.

The popularity of the Social Democrats suffered greatly at the beginning of the year when the party backed its leader and then prime minister Stanislav Gross in a scandal over his personal finances that led to a coalition crisis. Mr Gross resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Jiri Paroubek in April.