Despite ‘winning’ the Czech parliamentary elections, the Czech Social Democrats have been firmly upstaged by Andrej Babiš

The Czech Republic held parliamentary elections on 25-26 October. Seán Hanley provides an overview of the election, which saw a disappointing result for the Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD), who received the largest number of seats, but fell well short of their target of 25 per cent of the vote. The real winners were a new party, ANO2011, who greatly exceeded expectations and only narrowly finished behind the ČSSD. The result leaves a fragmented party system, with ANO’s leader Andrej Babiš, and Czech president Miloš Zeman now arguably the country’s two most powerful figures.