The power of the street

22.05.2019 - EB

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.

Glossary of difficult words

body count - the number of persons involved in a particular activity; a count of the bodies of killed enemy soldiers;

pertinent - relevant or applicable to a particular matter;

empirical - based on, concerned with or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic;

plurality - the number of votes cast for a candidate who receives more than any other but does not receive an absolute majority;

to thunder - to speak loudly and forcefully.



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