Analysis of support for Romani candidates in the Czech elections to the European Parliament 2024

Which regions, districts, towns and streets cast their ballots for a Romani candidate? David Beňák, who ran on the Association of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) list in 17th place, won a total of 1,814 preferential votes, or 0.23 % of the ballots cast for that movement.

Beňák did not come anywhere close to the 38,808 votes he needed to be seated in the EP. Candidate Miko, who ran in 10th place on the Mayors and Independents (STAN) list, won 692 preferential votes, or 0.26 % of all the ballots cast for STAN.

Given the number of preferential votes cast for STAN candidates Danuše Nerudová (59,577) and Jan Farský (44,503) Miko needed more than 44,503 preferential votes to be elected. That was an unachievable goal for him.

Ivana Batthyany, running for The Left (Levice), got just 23 preferential votes, and while that was 1 % of the total votes cast for that party, as a whole it received an absolutely negligible number of votes overall, a total of 0.07 % of the national vote. We will not analyze her candidacy here further, as the number of votes is so small that analyzing them will not yield any insight.

It is interesting to recall that in the 2009 elections to the European Parliament, Lucie Fuková (running as Lucie Horváthová) was given sixth place on the Green Party list and won 1,113 preferential votes out of the total of 48,621 ballots cast for that party nationwide, which was equal to 2.28 % of the total vote.

Disappointing numbers of preferential votes for Romani candidates

For Beňák and Miko, the number of preferential votes they received has to be a great disappointment. Miko made no secret of the fact that he had hoped for as many as 10,000 preferential votes and his great disillusionment could be heard in his voice when the results were announced.

Several days later, Miko also admitted that he made essential errors and that his campaign had not been correctly targeted. He did not manage to reach the middle and upper-middle class Romani voters who preferred not to cast their ballots for Beňák on the ANO list led by ex-PM Andrej Babiš.

Miko also did not manage to persuade the non-Romani voters who were fans of his attempts to aid child asylum-seekers who were abandoned in Greek refugee camps during the migration crisis of 2015. That is the same target group of non-Romani voters who are not racist toward Roman people here, but are their fans.

Many such voters likely never even knew Miko was running for the EP. Those who did know that may also have been deterred from voting for him by the aggressive, confrontational tone of his campaign against his fellow Romani candidate David Beňák, either from Miko himself or from his supporters.

Ahead of the elections, Beňák did not want to estimate the number of preferential votes he might win, but after conducting a massive, sometimes quite aggressive campaign together with Romani online influencers from the circles of the political party Roma Luma, there is no doubt that he certainly expected more votes than he received. Just as during the municipal elections in 2022, this is the second time it has turned out that support from those who are quite loud on social media and create the illusion of being able to influence a large group of Romani men and women has, in practice, no weight when it comes to the actual choices made by Romani voters.

An erroneous interpretation of the EP results is also circulating online with the false claim that Beňák moved from 17th place up to 10th place on the ANO list. The number 10 in the table on the website www.volby.cz does not show the absolute ranking of the candidates after the votes have been counted, but indicates where Beňák was ranked as an alternate for any of the seven elected MEPs of the ANO movement (in other words, he did remain in 17th place after the ballots were counted).

Beňák was not aided by the higher number of preferential votes cast for him, nor was his candidacy assisted by the endorsements of several recognized Romani authorities, such as Dana Hrušková, who works for Beňák’s “hometown” municipal department of Prague 14 (where he also worked for a very long time), or Gabriela Hrabaňová, director of the European Roma Grassroots Organizations Network, or political scientist Edita Stejskalová.

Preferential votes in the regions

Beňák scored his greatest success in the Central Bohemian Region, where he won 303 preferential votes. The Ústecký Region was the next most successful for him with 295 votes.

ANO’s Romani candidate won significantly more votes in the Ústecký Region than did Miko, who got just 25 preferential votes there. In Prague, Beňák won 231 preferential votes.

Beňák also enjoyed decent support in the Moravian-Silesian Region (163 preferential votes) and the Hradec Králové Region (156 votes) He won the fewest preferential votes in the Vysočina Region, where just 29 voters circled his name.

Jaroslav Miko scored his biggest electoral success in Prague, where he received 199 preferential votes. The Central Bohemian Region was second, where he scored 140 votes.

Those two regions are significantly different for Miko from his results in the rest of the country, with third place going to the Moravian-Silesian Region, where he won 55 preferential votes. His support from other regions was weak – the fewest votes came from the Vysočina Region, with 21 votes from the Zlín Region and 22 from the Hradec Králové Region.

District-level preferential votes

Beňák earned the most preferential votes in the district of Nymburk (89). Miko won just nine votes there, and the difference between their numbers was most pronounced there.

Other strong areas of support for Beňák were the districts of Chomutov (66 preferential votes), Teplice (59), and Náchod (57). Miko persuaded voters in the single digits only in those districts.

Beňák also had good results in other northern and northeastern districts of the Czech Republic. These include the Ostrava-město district (59 preferential votes), Karviná (56), Ústí nad Labem (48) and Sokolov (47).

Beňák enjoyed less support in the southern and western parts of the Czech Republic. He received relatively fewer preferential votes in the Plzeň-město district (14), České Budějovice (24) and Třebíč (10).

Miko won the most preferential votes in the district of Benešov (33). This was one of the very few districts where he significantly exceeded Beňák, who got just nine preferential votes there.

More support for Miko came from the Praha-východ district (22 preferential votes) and the Ostrava-město district (21). He earned similar results in the Kladno district (21 preferential votes compared to Beňák’s 26) and in the Brno-město district (20).

Miko also won preferential votes in several districts of South Bohemia and West Bohemia, such as Cheb (14), Tábor (eight) and České Budějovice (eight). His lowest support came from areas where Roma are strong, traditionally, such as North Bohemia and Northeastern Bohemia.

For example, in the district of Chomutov, Miko scored just three preferential votes, earning the same number in Karlovy Vary.

Municipal-level preferential votes

If we analyze the preferential vote results at the level of the municipality, the most successful place for Beňák was the Municipal Department of Praha 14, where he earned the highest number of preferential votes (49). Praha 14 is a place where he lived for many years and worked as head of the local Social Welfare Department.

Given the total number of Romani people who live in Praha 14, however, this is quite a low number. It is also worth mentioning that Lysá nad Labem, where Beňák currently lives, ranks ninth on the list of municipalities supporting him with 19 preferential votes, and Bílina, where he comes from, is in 11th place (18 preferential votes).

Beňák also scored notable wins in the municipalities of Trmice (25 preferential votes), Kadaň (23) and Náchod (21). In Děčín he got 20 preferential votes.

If we look at the specific precincts inside the municipalities, Beňák earned the most preferential votes in Precinct no. 1 in Opočna and in the tiny village of Hroznětín (17 preferential votes). He also scored in Precinct no. 2 in Trmice and in Precinct 20 on the Chanov housing estate in Most, where he won 11 preferential votes, 25 % of all the ballots cast for the ANO movement there (a total of 44).

For Miko, municipal departments in Prague unequivocally dominated at the municipal level. There are 12 such municipal departments in his top 20 municipalities.

Praha 4 leads with 27 preferential votes for Miko, followed by Praha 10 with 24, Praha 8 with 19 and Praha 6 with 17. Miko’s home town of Vlašim is the only other municipality that ranks as highly as the Prague municipal departments, at 14 preferential votes.

It is also interesting that Miko was supported in the municipal department of Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz, where he won 12 preferential votes. Those ballots were cast specifically in precinct 8016, which includes Jindřichova Street, Bachmačská Street, Verdunská Street and others, where he won 10 of those votes, or 62.5 % of the ballots cast for STAN in that precinct (16 total).

Voter turnout in socially excluded localities

Let’s look at how certain socially excluded localities voted and what support was like there for Beňák and Miko. Our analysis will include the non-Romani incumbent Tomáš Zdechovský, who ran on the list of the governing Spolu (Together) coalition in fourth place as one of a very few non-Romani politicians for whom some Romani voters expressed support on social media.

Zdechovský himself made no secret of that support from Romani voters and publicly referred to it on his Facebook profile. News server Romea.cz has long been tracking electoral results in the specific socially excluded localities we analyzed here, and we also took into consideration localities where these candidates campaigned in person.

Generally, it is possible to say that just as during previous elections, voter turnout in these localities was low. However, if we compare the 2024 elections to the 2019 EP turnout, we can see growth in some localities.

For example, at the Chanov housing estate in Most, in 2019 just eight voters cast their ballots (1.01 % of local voting), while this year there were 63 voters and turnout shot up to 9.84 % locally. In the town of Krupka at the Maršov housing estate, between 10-15 % of voters cast ballots this year, a slight increase over 2019 (7-11 %).

In Trmice, 24.19 % of voters turned out this year. In 2019 just 16.89 % did.

The least participation was in the precincts on the Janov housing estate in Litvínov. In precinct no. 4 there, just five of 265 possible voters turned out.

Voter turnout in precinct 4 was 1.89 % (1.7 % in 2019). In the neighboring precinct no. 3 it wasn’t much better.

In precinct 3, 12 of the 320 voters turned out, a rate of 3.75 % compared to 3.24 % in 2019. Ahead of the elections, a debate was held there called “Jak na Janov” (How to Handle Janov) between Beňák, Miko and other politicians.

The precincts on the Mojžíř housing estate in Ústí nad Labem fared similarly, with voter turnout of 4.91 % (5.39 % in 2019), while in the Předlice neighborhood of Ústí nad Labem it was 4.4 % compared to 2.31 % in 2019, and in precinct 8001 in Ostrava’s Přívoz quarter turnout was 5.43 %, down from 6.33 % in 2019.

Numbers of votes for Romani candidates in the socially excluded localities

The highest number of preferential votes in these selected socially excluded localities was won by Beňák. He scored on the Chanov housing estate in Most (11 preferential votes) as well as in Trmice (25).

A total of 10 preferential votes were also won in Trmice by the incumbent MEP Tomáš Zdechovský, while Miko scored none, but as is mentioned above, he did score in Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz with 10 preferential votes. The outcome in the town of Vsetín must have been a disappointment to Beňák, where he held a meeting with the Romani people living in the container housing in the Poschle quarter.

A video of that meeting circulated through social media and some Romani social media users reproached Beňák for not objecting to the speech full of stereotypes made by Vice-Mayor Pavel Bartoň, who was elected there for ANO. In precinct 7, which includes the container housing, Beňák did not earn a single preferential vote.

Miko didn’t earn any votes in precinct 7 either. The candidate who did best there was incumbent MEP Tomáš Zdechovský.

The governing Spolu (Together) coalition beat ANO in precinct 7 by two votes. However, it is necessary to point out that the precinct covers not just the container housing, but other streets with no Romani residents.