The Czech parliamentary elections held in May 2010 are often labeled as an electoral earthquake. The support for the two biggest parties dropped to a historical minimum and the Christian democratic party left the lower chamber of the parliament for the first time in history. Moreover, two new political parties gained parliamentary representation and even entered the new government coalition. One of the new successful parties was the Public Affairs (Věci veřejné, VV) labeled as an excellent example of centrist populist (Učeň, Pop-Eleches), exclusively populist (Havlík and Pinková) or anti-establishment reform parties (Sikk, Hanley). This paper examines the reasons for and the context of the electoral breakthrough of the VV. Are there any specific conditions for the rise of party populism in the Czech Republic? Is Czech democracy vulnerable to populist challenges? Using mainly the data from (post)election surveys, the paper tries to find answers to these question through a detailed examination of the case of the Czech 2010 elections.
The data indicates that the 2010 elections were held under specific conditions with a record level of popular dissatisfaction with politics, unprecedently low level of party attachment and the growing significance of the corruption issue in the election campaign. Examining closely the attitudes of voters of the Public Affairs, the electoral breakthrough of the party could be interpreted as an expression of discontent of centre-right voters without strong ties to any particular political party and indicates possible far-reaching changes within the Czech party politics in the future.
