Priorities of disappointed voters of the government coalition? From social networks, it might seem at times that it should be about marriage for everyone or climate change, for example. However, this largely contradicts the survey of the STEM agency, from which it is based that security and one’s own and national prosperity are much higher on the imaginary scale. So why is the result of the investigation so different from the situation on the Internet? Bubbles, different preferences of different parties or one’s own wallet can give clues.
A few days ago, the Society for the Promotion of Liberal Democracy published research by the agency STEM, which focuses only on disaffected voters of the Five Coalition in 2021 and asks them about the reasons for their declining support for the coalition parties. The survey reveals that the issues of ecology and global warming (14 percent of voters marked them as their priority) or LGBT issues (said as a priority by 7 percent of voters), which are promoted by the government coalition, are not very important to the voters of the governing parties.
At the same time, marriage for all or the Green Deal in European politics have dominated the public space for a number of recent months. Dissatisfied government voters, one group of which is looking for another alternative, instead demand security and economic prosperity. The research also shows that more people react to the causes of individual members of the government than to their own political actions.
Safety first
And why do people end up preferring the essential topic over the “social” one? Political scientist Otto Eibl from Brno’s Masaryk University points out that polls show that voters prioritize “fundamental” topics such as budget consolidation rather than “lighter” ones such as marriage for all. This is because issues like austerity touch voters’ “wallets” and lead to dissatisfaction when they are personally touched. Conversely, topics such as marriage for all, although many voters support them, are not a priority for them and will not be a major factor in the elections.
“Same-sex marriage won’t be a priority for 90 percent of voters — it’s something that’s nice to have (for many of them), but it won’t be the main reason anyone should vote for parties,” he says.
Eibl points out that polls show “what” voters want, but not “why” they want it. Therefore, it is important to interpret the results of the polls with regard to the context and the impact on the lives of the voters. Simply put, voters are interested in issues that affect them personally, even if they perceive other issues, such as marriage for all, as positive, they judge.
Political scientist Roman Chytilek believes that the reason why coalition governments focus on topics for voters, such as budget consolidation, is the different priority of topics among the voters of individual coalition parties and certain bubbles that arise.
Parties like ODS, STAN and TOP 09 try to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters and therefore focus on topics that are important to most of them, such as a stable economy. In contrast, the KDU-ČSL and the Pirates mobilize their voters on conservative and liberal topics.
“Coalition governance on such a plan takes place in such a way that not only legislation is adopted, on which everyone is convinced of the value, but that support is exchanged for individual laws and political measures, so that at the end of the electoral period all parties can tell their electorate that they have achieved something from his electoral program. This is a typical sign of consensus-led coalitions, where the larger parties do not try to weaken and destroy the smaller ones in the framework of governance,” he explains. At the same time, however, this system leads to issues that are more important to the majority of voters being “overtaken”.
STEM research
The survey “Analysis of dissatisfied voters of government parties” was commissioned by the Society for the Support of Liberal Democracy. The research focused on voters of the current coalition, who are now hesitating whether they will vote the same way or even go to the polls. This is approximately 880,000 people (40 percent of the five-coalition voters in 2021).
The poll, which was conducted in February 2024, came shortly after polls were published in recent weeks showing the opposition ANO movement significantly ahead of the current governing coalition. The survey by Kantar caused surprise, which gave the ANO movement almost 40 percent in preferences, while the uproar was calmed down by the model of the Median agency, which estimated ANO’s preference at 31 percent of the vote. We wrote about it here.
The association for the support of liberal democracy, which is openly supported by businessmen Dan Šankypl, Jan Barta and Petr Krajiček, was interested in what the voters of the current government find most objectionable and why the government’s preferences are declining. They also warn about lost votes on their website. There were around a million of them in 2021 and they can significantly influence the outcome of the elections. The research also shows that opposition to Andrej Babiš is a strong bond between coalition voters. “Voters, who are now hesitant to participate, expected change and the choice of the least evil from the elections, and the government did not fulfill their expectations. The main motivator remains the so-called principle of negative choice in the form of defining oneself against A. Babiš,” the authors of the research state.
The research focused primarily on voters from 2021 who are hesitant to support the government. The majority (410 thousand) want to keep voting for the government, they just don’t know which party, because the one that got the vote last time no longer deserves it. In another subgroup are former supporters of the coalition who are reluctant to go to the next election (250 thousand), in the third those who immediately express a desire to vote for someone outside the government camp (220 thousand). The researchers focused the most on the last two mentioned groups. According to STEM, there are approximately 2 percent of voters who voted for the five-coalition in 2021 and now will no longer vote for the current coalition. The research no longer focused on her, as well as on 60 percent of loyal voters.
According to the disgruntled group, the government should show strength, determination and at the same time reassure the public that it is safe. People also expect the government to offer them vision, courage and concrete communication. In this regard, however, government officials must go beyond mere declarations and PR statements, and at the same time present concrete steps to fulfill the vision, writes STEM.
According to the research, the majority of voters of the governing parties agree on the country’s pro-Western orientation and appreciate the government’s current foreign policy. The only significant deviation in foreign policy issues is the opinion: “The Czech Republic should support Ukraine in regaining its lost territories”. Only 49 percent of voters, who are most hesitant to support the current coalition, answered this question positively.
“Even dissatisfied voters appreciate the government in the field of geopolitics, but it is not key for them. At the moment, the necessary but insufficient conditions for the election play a role,” the authors of the survey themselves state regarding foreign policy issues.
Almost all voters of the coalition also agree on a negative view of the leaders of the opposition parties Andrej Babiš (ANO) and Tomio Okamura (SPD), 95 percent of the voters of the coalition expressed a negative opinion about them.
Most voters also agree on the importance of healthy state finances and deficit reduction (55 percent). Healthcare and the development of commodity and energy prices are also important for voters. However, according to researchers, voters will not agree on how the government should approach these problems. STEM says it wants to further explore how voters envision solutions to the issues listed. “The government is generally praised for having the courage to take unpopular measures. Paradoxically, at the same time, key concrete measures such as the austerity package and the pension reform are evaluated negatively,” the research claims.
STEM also notes that voters are more bothered by scandals involving individual politicians than by unpopular government policies. More than half of hesitant voters (51 percent) are bothered by the government’s socially insensitive communication and the case of Minister Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL) with the minister’s party at the time of the shooting at the FF UK. Forty-eight percent of unsatisfied voters then evaluated the shortages of some medicines negatively. On the other hand, voters were least affected by the lack of places in secondary schools, which was rated strongly negatively by 22 percent of hesitant voters.
The research also revealed that the government voters give the lowest priority to the issues of ecology and the LGBT community. The environment and the fight against climate change were identified as one of the three priorities by 14 percent of voters. The fight for the so-called rights of sexual minorities then 7 percent of voters.
