Final Word from Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Mirek Topolánek doesn't much trust the opinion polls - who does? - and has a specific reason for this. One of his rivals ran a polling agency, he told MFD today, meaning Pavel Fischer and STEM. Another opponent is from the Academy of Sciences, meaning Jiří Drahoš and CVVM. And a third agency is part of an oligarchal structure, meaning Médea Research and Jaromír Soukup (who supports Miloš Zeman). Fair enough, but Topolánek neglected to mention Sanep, which consistently rates him 10 points higher than the other polls. More important than the polling agencies, though, are the TV stations, and Topolánek's deficit is even bigger here. Zeman has TV Barrandov, TV Nova and TV Prima; Drahoš has Czech TV; and Topolánek merely has TV Blesk (which is owned by his former employer). Any post-mortem of these elections should look not only at how biased and predictive the polls were, but also at the importance of alliances with the TV barons. [Czech Republic CME]
Glossary of difficult words
post-mortem - an analysis or discussion of an event held soon after it has occurred, esp. in order to determine why it was a failure;
predictive - relating to or having the effect of predicting an event or result.