Czech opposition leads European polls, but turnout low

(PRAGUE) - Pro-european parties were the big winners in the European election vote in the Czech Republic, the first exit poll published Saturday showed, but turnout was low.

According to a survey by the daily Prague newspaper Dnes, the right-leaning opposition party TOP 09 was in the lead with 18 per cent of the vote, slightly ahead of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka's social-democratic party CSSD, which was polling 17 per cent.

The same exit poll put the centrist, populist ANO, led by the influential finance minister Andrej Babis, third at 15.5 per cent.

All three parties are pro-european, while the anti-immigration Usvit, or Dawn party, drew only two percent, according to the same exit poll.

The vote in the Czech Republic, which has 21 seats in the European Parliament, closed at 1200GMT.

TOP 09 holds a strong position in the capital Prague but also in the country's other big cities.

It's electoral list was drawn up by the economist and mathematician Ludek Niedermayer, a former vice-governor the country's national bank.

The Czech ballot, which opened midday on Friday, was marked by a record level of abstention, with up to 80 per cent staying at home, according to an estimate by the news agency CTK, which said that only "around a fifth of voters" had turned out.

In the previous european elections, in 2004 and 2009, the turnout was around 28 per cent.

"It seems that Czech voters still do not identify enough with the European Union," the sociologist Jaromir Volek told the CT television channel.

"People still don't take the European context seriously," Milos Zeman, the Czech president, said, after having voted in Prague on Friday. "They are wrong to think that is does not concern them."

Nearly 400 million people are entitled to vote in the European elections, but many choose not to. Turnout has fallen steadily from 62 percent in 1979 to just 43 percent in 2009.