If elections were held now, the ODS would win with 29.5 percent of the vote, according to a Factum Invenio poll released April 18.

The ČSSD would come in second with 23.6 percent of the vote.

The poll shows that the ČSSD has slipped three percentage points since March. It comes as Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek, leading the ČSSD ticket in the Ústí region, says he will not be satisfied unless his party wins the election with at least 30 percent of the vote.

Jiří Černý, an analyst responsible for the Factum Invenio survey, says the ODS's lead is not significant enough to make any predictions about the outcome of the elections.

"In 2002, people shifted toward voting for the [ČSSD] at the last minute," Černý says. "In this election, parties are aware of the trend and they are timing their campaigns accordingly."

The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) is running in third place, with 18 percent of the vote, according to Factum Invenio. In the same poll, the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) gained ground, with 12.3 percent of the vote, while 10.4 percent of Czechs surveyed said they would vote for the Green Party (SZ).

Coalitions likely

The 21 other parties running in the elections are not expected to reach 5 percent, the amount of votes necessary to gain seats in Parliament.

Factum Invenio's poll predicts that 54.1 percent of voters will turn out for elections June 2–3. The agency also predicts that the most likely coalition now either looks to be a union between the ODS, KDU-ČSL and the Green Party or between the ODS and ČSSD.

Paroubek recently ruled that scenario out, as well as a possible coalition with the KSČM.

"We never considered it," he now says. The Greens and Christian Democrats also say they would not support any government that in any way involved the KSČM.

Since neither the ODS nor the ČSSD are expected to garner enough votes to build a majority government, the influence of smaller parties like the KDU-ČSL and SZ has increased considerably in recent months.

The Greens are holding steady at 10 percent and are not losing ground to the KDU-ČSL, Černý says.

"The Greens attract the undecided voter as well as ČSSD voters," he says. "Some ODS voters occasionally go Green, although it's not typical. ODS voters tend to be more loyal to their party than ČSSD voters."

Preference for the Christian Democrats has gone up 3.5 percent in the past few months. There have been some disparities in recent polls, with some showing the KDU-ČSL's popularity at 4 percent.

"Some people and media are falsely concluding that the KDU-ČSL would not get into Parliament," says Tomáš Lebeda, a political analyst at the Institute of Sociology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

He says some polls only show party preferences while others show election prognoses.