{"id":474095,"date":"2025-10-04T18:07:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T18:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/474095\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T18:07:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T18:07:14","slug":"babis-wins-czech-vote-preliminary-results-show-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/474095\/","title":{"rendered":"Babi\u0161 wins Czech vote, preliminary results show \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Based on past election experience, the State Election Commission, which is compiling\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.volby.cz\/app\/ps2025\/cs\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">provisional results<\/a>\u00a0from more than 14,800 locations across Czechia and worldwide, is expected to confirm the final outcome by Monday. But the introduction of new mail-in voting could cause delays. <\/p>\n<p>In total, 4,462 candidates and 26 parties are competing.\u00a0Voter turnout so far is 68 percent, the highest since the 1998 elections.<\/p>\n<p>The STAN (Mayors and Independents) party, the fourth member of the current governing coalition, trailed in third with 11 percent, followed by the far-right, eurosceptic Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) at 8 percent \u2014 down from 13 percent in recent opinion polls. The Pirate Party, former governing coalition member that quit last year, was on 8 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The election surprise is the Motorists for Themselves party, which is on track to enter the parliament with around 7 percent despite hovering barely above the 5 percent threshold during the campaign. The far-left Sta\u010dilo! (Enough) party, which had been polling higher, is likely to fall short.<\/p>\n<p>Europe has been watching the Czech elections with caution, as Babi\u0161 has vowed to scrap the ammunition initiative for Ukraine, challenge NATO\u2019s plans to boost military spending, and confront the European Commission over the Green Deal.<\/p>\n<p>Critics fear that if the billionaire regains power, the Czech Republic could become a new\u00a0b\u00eate noire\u00a0for the EU alongside Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Hungary and Robert Fico\u2019s Slovakia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe that if we look at his statements and his allies in Europe \u2014 like Viktor Orb\u00e1n and what he has done with Hungary \u2014 he [Babi\u0161] will start pushing the Czech Republic toward the margins,\u201d Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsk\u00fd told POLITICO.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want the Czech Republic to end up on the margins of Europe, like what happened to Hungary or Slovakia,\u201d Lipavsk\u00fd said. \u201cAnd today there is a big difference between being part of a willing coalition or not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Based on past election experience, the State Election Commission, which is compiling\u00a0provisional results\u00a0from more than 14,800 locations across&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[23404,71115,3032,31,33,28284,35,2000,299,5187,85427,2190,2597,5111,617,97492,48,6566,2558,657,1781],"class_list":{"0":"post-474095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-ammunition","9":"tag-andrej-babis","10":"tag-czech-republic","11":"tag-democracy","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-elections-in-europe","14":"tag-energy","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-europe","17":"tag-european","18":"tag-general-petr-pavel","19":"tag-hungary","20":"tag-military","21":"tag-parliament","22":"tag-pensions","23":"tag-petr-fiala","24":"tag-rights","25":"tag-robert-fico","26":"tag-slovakia","27":"tag-ukraine","28":"tag-viktor-orban"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115317233704283102","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}