The high turnout in the elections affects the whole country. She helped Pavlov in Prague and the surrounding area, Babiš in the border region — ČT24 — Czech Television
In this year’s first round of presidential elections, turnout exceeded the seventy percent mark in thirty districts. The highest values were reached in the districts of Praha-západ and Praha-východ, where more than three quarters of voters went to the polls.
Also in 2018, these districts were among those with the highest voter turnout. Compared to this year, however, it was five percent lower points. And they were the only two districts with more than seventy percent of voters participating in the elections. Furthermore, these are districts that greatly help the electoral success of the candidate Petar Pavlo. With a voter turnout of more than three-quarters, he won approximately fifty percent of the votes.
This is even more pronounced in the case of Prague. Almost seventy-one percent of voters came to the polls, of which 51 percent cast their vote for the final winner of the first round. In absolute terms, this means that out of more than 900,000 Prague voters, almost 643,000 went to the polls. Petr Pavel thus received over 324,800 votes.
In thirty districts, where the voter turnout was above 70 percent, there was an increase compared to the last election. Compared to 2018, it is an average of six percentage points. This also applies to the fact that the districts with the highest voter turnout are among those where the number of voters is lower than in 2018, in the case of Prague even lower.
More voters voted in the border region than five years ago
The highest increase in voter turnout occurred in the districts of Tachov, Chomutov, Teplice and Louny. In all these cases, the increase is around nine percentage points, and Andrej Babiš won in all the mentioned regions. In the district of Louny, he won over 51 percent of the vote, in the others he was close to the fifty percent threshold.
It clearly follows from this that Babiš managed to activate the voters to come to the elections and support his presidential candidacy.
The ten districts in which he won the highest number of votes are Karviná, Bruntál, Most, Louny, Teplice, Chomutov, Tachov, Děčín, Sokolov and Znojmo. Eight out of ten of these districts are among the top ten cases with the highest increase in voter turnout compared to the elections in 2018. Voter turnout also increased significantly in the remaining two districts, namely in Karviná and Znojmo.
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Andrej Babiš is also successfully addressing voters in districts where Miloš Zeman was successful five years ago. The difference between Zeman’s and Babiš’s gains in the aforementioned ten districts amounts to one percentage point on average. These are therefore very balanced results, while in the case of Andrej Babiš with a higher voter turnout.
The question remains whether it is possible to increase voter turnout in the second round of elections. If we look at the increase in voter turnout between the first and second round of the presidential elections in 2018, it increased the most in the districts of Bruntál, Karviná, Jeseník, Prachatice and Tachov. Again, these are districts in which Andrej Babiš very successfully appealed to voters. And they are also districts dominated by Miloš Zeman five years ago.
The possible success of this year’s candidate Andrej Babiš also depends on whether he manages to increase the turnout of his supporters even more, or whether he reaches the maximum number of voters who can be reached in these districts with this year’s high turnout.