Final Word from Thursday, April 25, 2024
After ANO jumped in Feb. in a Kantar poll for Czech TV by 3.5 percentage points to 38.5-39.0%, PM Petr Fiala told CzechCrunch that election polls can't be taken seriously and that he, as a political scientist, knows how to use the polling methodology to get any result you want. ANO has since dropped back to 34.5-35.5%, which Kantar attributed, as expected, to Andrej Babiš's leaked email about compromising material on Foreign Min. Jan Lipavský. The latest Median poll, released yesterday, shows that ANO and ODS are more or less in the same place that they've been in for months. This Median poll is more confirmation that the big bounce in ANO's rating in the Kantar poll in Feb. was an outlier, but there still hasn't been an adequate explanation of why it happened. If the goal of those at Czech TV who, like Fiala, know how to use the polling methodology to "get any result you want" was to launch "Antibabiš 2.0," it didn't work. With just six weeks until the EU elections, time is running out. [ Czech Republic European Union anti-Babiš Television OVM CZ survey ]
Glossary of difficult words
to catch on - to become popular;
bounce - a sudden rise in the level of something;
outlier - a data point on a graph or in a set of results that is very much bigger or smaller than the next nearest data point;
adequate - satisfactory or acceptable in quality or quantity.