Final Word from Monday, March 18, 2019

Miloš Zeman won 38.6% of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections last year, but he apparently considered it a big failure. He wanted to win outright, in part because he knew the other candidates could gang up with Jiří Drahoš against him in the second round. Zeman's strategy was to let the other candidates kill each other before the first round as he watched from the sidelines. Zuzana Čaputová's strategy for winning in the first round was an election poll paid for by her team. It gave her 52.9% of the vote, which turned out to be 30.3% (and 12.3 percentage points) more than the actual result. Both Zeman and Čaputová overplayed their hand in the first round and failed to seal the deal at the polls. Zeman became the slight underdog between the two rounds but won mainly because he united the voters of ANO, ČSSD, SPD and KSČM. Čaputová goes into the second round as the overwhelming favorite. That's where this comparison ends for now. [ Czech Republic Slovakia Slovak ]