Final Word from Wednesday, March 8, 2017
ANO won the regional elections in Oct. by 5.8 percentage points (21.05% to 15.25%), but almost everyone is expecting Andrej Babiš to win the parliamentary elections in Oct. by at least 10 points. Why? Mainly because that's what the election polls say. There is really no other objective explanation. There are too many unanswered questions in terms of the possible impact on voters of ČSSD's tax plan, KDU-ČSL's newfound concern for small business, TOP 09's "democratic coalition" and Babiš's own oligarchal issues. A recent poll for the Czech CFA Society found that 93.7% of respondents expect ANO to be in the next government, to 63.9% for KDU-ČSL and 58.6% for ČSSD. Yet 87.6% of respondents (and 88.5% of Final Word readers) said that election polls have little or no effect on how they themselves vote. Although Babiš is more often compared to Donald Trump, his current pre-election poll position is more like that of Hillary Clinton: The election is his to lose. [Czech Republic survey]
Glossary of difficult words
newfound (or new-found) - recently discovered or established;
his to lose - meaning that he is ahead by so much that the only way he could lose at that point is for him to defeat himself.