President Petr Pavel and Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) both have the confidence of a majority of Czechs, according to a STEM survey for CNN Prima News TV, conducted at the beginning of this year and released yesterday.

They are followed by Senate Speaker Milos Vystrcil (ODS) and Chamber of Deputies Speaker Tomio Okamura (SPD), who are trusted by around two-fifths. However, out of the top elected officials, Okamura also finds the most public opposition.

Pavel was trusted by 57% of respondents and Babis by 55%. “Both elected officials now enjoy high support and have considerable political capital at their disposal,” the authors of the survey said.

Babis is the head of the new coalition government of his ANO, Okamura’s far-right SPD, and the Motorists.

Compared to a survey conducted after the previous parliamentary elections in 2021, trust in the president is higher now, as just 29% of citizens trusted President Milos Zeman at that time. In the case of the prime minister, Babis also enjoys a higher confidence than his predecessor Petr Fiala (ODS) in January 2022 (38%).

At the beginning of this year, 39% of respondents expressed confidence in Vystrcil and Okamura. However, lower house speaker Okamura has significantly more people expressing strong distrust in him.

Vystrcil now has a similar level of trust as in 2022, while Okamura has slightly higher trust than his predecessor Marketa Pekarova Adamova (TOP 09), who was trusted by 31% of people at the time.

“As expected, the level of trust in top elected officials is strongly influenced by political preferences. We see majority trust in PM Babis among voters for ANO, SPD, Stacilo! and, to a lesser extent, among voters for the Motorists,” said STEM.

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Okamura is trusted mainly by voters for his party; ANO voters trust him less, though still in a majority, which is not the case for voters of the Motorists. Voters for the current opposition (ODS, Christian Democrats, TOP 09, STAN, and the Pirates) clearly trust President Petr Pavel. The majority of them also trust Senate Speaker Milos Vystrcil, although a lower percentage, especially among Pirate Party voters.

A further question was included in the survey following the president’s New Year’s address.

The survey found that Pavel has a strong mandate from the public to ensure that the government respects democracy. Asked whether the president should monitor whether the government complies with the democratic rules of the Czech Republic, 72% of people answered “definitely yes” or “probably yes”.

The STEM survey was conducted on a sample of 1,089 people from 2-7 January.