Prague - The composition of the Czech lower chamber will dramatically change after the early election scheduled for 25 and 26 October.
According to data collected by the Median polling agency at the end of July and the beginning of August, the left-wing CSSD would win the election with 32 percent of the vote, followed by the Communist Party (KSCM) with 15.5 percent, the conservative TOP 09 with 15 percent and the right-wing ODS with 13.5 percent. These are the four most powerful political parties in the Czech Republic.
Czech billionaire's party confident ahead of snap vote
Czech technocratic government loses confidence vote
According to the Median survey, two other parties would pass the 5 percent electoral threshold - President Milos Zeman's left-wing SPOZ and the Christian Democratic Party (KDU-CSL), both with 5 percent of the vote.
Aktualne.cz has calculated that the CSSD would win 80 seats in the 200-member Chamber of Deputies. This outcome would permit the party to form a majority government with any of the other three major parties, the KSCM, TOP 09 and ODS, which would control 38, 36 and 32 seats, respectively.
The CSSD has said though that it will prefer to form a minority government.
Because of the d'Hondt method that favors big parties, the SPOZ and KDU-CSL would take only 7 seats each.
Public Affairs and its split faction LIDEM would not pass the election threshold and would thus disappear from the lower chamber.
The CSSD would win the majority of seats in all of the Czech Republic's 14 regions with the exception of the capital city Prague, whose population traditionally vote right-wing parties. TOP 09 would win in Prague with 8 seats, but the CSSD would take more seats than the ODS (seven and six, respectively).
Electoral lists presented by the parties show that only 94 current deputies have a realistic chance to defend their seats - 37 from the CSSD, 23 from TOP 09 and 21 from the KSCM, and only 13 from the ODS.
In the 2010 general elections, only 82 deputies were reelected.
