Final Word from Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Protesters are used to measuring their strength by body count. Fifty thousand is the pertinent number for the event yesterday on Wenceslas Square. Yet a more relevant number might be 38.40%. That's the percentage of the vote won in the last parliamentary elections by the political parties that were represented at the anti-government protests over the past four weeks. If we throw in ČSSD (Petr Dolínek), the number rises to 45.67%, but the total still falls short of the 48.04% of non-protesting ANO, SPD and KSČM. If we instead use the latest CVVM poll for the EU elections, the parties protesting against Andrej Babiš and Marie Benešová have a 31.5% rating (40.0% with ČSSD), to 43.0% for ANO-SPD-KSČM. The CVVM poll was conducted before the protests began, so one empirical way to measure the power of the street is to compare the actual election results this weekend with the CVVM poll. A plurality for the opposition would show that when the street speaks, it thunders. [ Czech Republic European Parliament survey Justice Minister judiciary ]