Poll: Majority favour Constitutional Court move to scrap aspect of proportional voting system

Most Czechs who know about the Constitutional Court’s recent decisions to certain annual aspects of current electoral law welcome a change in how votes will translate into distribution of seats, according to a new STEM / MARK poll. However, opinion is more divided over the decision to lower thresholds that coalitions must achieve to enter Parliament.

The current electoral system uses a type of party-list proportional representation (the so-called d'Hondt method) that has benefited larger parties in certain regions of the Czech Republic, while each entity in a political coalition must garner 5 percent of the votes to enter Parliament -- the same threshold as an individual party needs, thus discouraging coalitions from forming.

Two-thirds of respondents in the STEM / MARK poll said they agree with the judge’s ruling that the current proportional representation system favours big parties and is therefore unconstitutional. Half of those polled were in favour of the ruling on thresholds and 44 percent against it, with 19 percent objecting to both decisions.