By Marek Prsin and Tim Haughton, LMU Munich, Germany and University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Czech politics used to be straightforward. For the first two decades after the Velvet Revolution, the story of party politics could be told largely with reference to just four parties. And party competition between the two main parties, the Social Democrats and the Civic Democratic Party, mostly revolved around a left-right dimension concerning the role the state or market should play in socio-economic questions. However, nearly four decades on from the collapse of the communist regime, the 2025 parliamentary elections served up a set of results that underline the changing patterns and motors of party politics not just in the Czech Republic, but also across the region. 

Yes to Babis’s ANO!

The clear winner of the election was Andrej Babis. Formed soon after the earthquake elections of 2010, his party, the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (Akce nespokojenych obcanu), whose initialsspell out the word for ‘Yes’ in Czech,ANO has been on a long ideological journey having allied itself with liberal, centrists and far right groupings at various points in its history, but also appealing to left-leaning voters.  In the current European Parliament, ANO MEPs sit together with Hungary’s Fidesz and the Austrian Freedom Party in the Patriots for Europe group.

The 34.5% of the votes won by ANO in 2025 owed much to the common thread running through Babis’s appeal since the party’s foundation: a dissatisfaction with the performance of the traditional mainstream parties (in the campaign Babis frequently labelled Czech premier Petr Fiala as the worst prime minister in history) and a belief that the businessman turned politician could run the country well. Initial data suggest that geographically a significant slice of ANO’s support came from voters in less developed regions of the country. The party also performed well among voters who traditionally support smaller far-left and far-right anti-system parties such as the Freedom and Direct Democracy party led by Tomio Okamura.

Polarized politics and the challenges of incumbency

Babis ran an effective campaign blending together a series of meetings with citizens across the country with an active social media operation promising that if the former finance and prime minister was returned to power ‘Yes, it will be better again’.

But mobilization messages were also central to the performance of the Together (Spolu) coalition led by Prime Minister Fiala. The Fiala government has faced a challenging in-tray during its four years in power: a pandemic, inflation, a cost of living crisis and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  In strong echoes of appeals used in recent elections in Poland and Slovakia against parties like Law and Justice and Smer, Spolu sought to mobilize voters around the threat Babis (and his potential allies) poses to democracy and to the Czech Republic’s geopolitical orientation.

The messages from both ANO and Spolu not only helped to reinforce a view of Czech politics being polarized, they also shored up support for the two main protagonists in the election and helped boost overall turnout levels to 69%. 

A New Electoral Vehicle

ANO, however, fell short of an overall majority meaning Babis will either form a minority single party government or strike deals to form a coalition. ANO’s most likely coalition partner are the Motorists. Following a common trend of new parties tapping into discontent with established politics, the Motorists emerged in 2022 fuelled both by a frustration with corruption in politics, but also by opposition to green policies and what they see as the threat to the automotive industry in the Czech Republic. Personality politics also played its part. The party drew on the appeal of the social media celebrity, vintage car collector, former amateur race driver and MEP Filip Turek.

The Motorists pulled in much of their vote from citizens living outside the country’s two main cities, Prague and Brno. Whilst this may be strongly linked to the areas of the country where citizens are more dependent on the car, the geographical spread of support was strikingly similar to another party, Public Affairs, that had burst onto the scene in its first election in 2010 running on a strong anti-establishment ticket.

The Motorists see themselves on the right of politics with some strong personal links to the once dominant figure of the Czech right, Vaclav Klaus. Their profile is clearer on the values dimensions, taking conservative stances on gender and funding for NGOs in opposition to what they see as the metropolitan urban elite, appeals that helped pull away some support from Okamura’s far-right anti-immigration and staunchly eurosceptic party.

Pirates Staying Afloat

One of the most striking substories of 2025 was the success of the Pirates who won just shy of 9% of the vote and achieved parliamentary representation for the third election in a row, a notable contrast with other Pirate parties across Europe. Their success is particularly remarkable given they were part of the Fiala government with poll ratings up until a year ago suggesting they were unlikely to retain any seats.

Their recipe for (limited) success lay in a series of strategic choices. The Pirates left the Fiala government in September 2024, changed leader and introduced organizational changes centralizing more decision-making. In the 2025 campaign, the Pirates positioned themselves as a socially liberal alternative, emphasising their clean record in government and their role in passing anti-corruption legislation. They also successfully mobilised younger voters by addressing a key issue for this generation: the lack of affordable housing.

Moreover, the 2025 election demonstrated learning on the part of both the Pirates’ leadership and voters when it came to the workings of the electoral system.  In 2021 when the Pirates ran in an electoral coalition with the Mayors (STAN), the party won just four of the coalition’s 37 seats due to preference voting. (Under the Czech Republic’s list based system voters are able to cast a preference vote for up to four individuals on the list). In this election not only were some prominent Green party politicians invited onto the list helping boost the overall size of the vote, but the voters of the Pirates appear to have learnt the impact of preference voting using their votes to express a preference for many of the list’s younger female candidates.

Enough of the Communists

In the 2021 elections neither the Czech Social Democrats nor the Communists, two of the four parties that had shaped the country’s political scene in the 1990s and 2000s, crossed the electoral threshold. Keen to return to parliament, the Communists forged a new electoral vehicle, Stacilo (Enough!) and struck a deal bringing social democrats on board.

But as the devastated face of Communist leader Katerina Konecna on election night underlined the strategy failed. The high overall turnout may have hit the Communists hard given their relatively small loyal electorate. But decisions to allow social democrats who had served in government onto the list scared off some of the more anti-establishment and pro-Russian voters. And some of the more traditional social democratic voters were not willing to cast their ballots for a list led by the Communists who had been a pariah party for much of the period since 1989.

The failure of Stacilo and the Social Democrats (who will not even have recourse to state funding for rebuilding) underlines not just the fact that there is no nominally left party in the Czech parliament for the second time in a row, but also the challenges facing parties of the left to win support in an era where the values dimension, anti-corruption and competence appeals appear to be the key motivating forces for voters.    

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Marek Prsin is research fellow and PhD student at LMU Munich.  His research focuses, in particular, on the Czech Pirates and his teaching encompasses political systems, party politics and democracy.  

Tim Haughton is Professor of Comparative and European Politics and a Deputy Director of the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) at the University of Birmingham.