About this election
The Czech presidential election of January 2023 produced a decisive change of direction. Petr Pavel, a retired army general and former chairman of NATO's Military Committee, won the run-off against the former prime minister Andrej Babiš by 58.3% to 41.7%, the widest margin in a directly elected Czech presidential contest, and brought a firmly pro-Western, pro-Ukrainian figure to the presidency in succession to Miloš Zeman.
The President of Czechia is directly elected for a five-year term (renewable once) by a two-round majority system. Though the office is largely ceremonial, it confers significant soft power and real prerogatives — naming the prime minister and constitutional judges, vetoing laws and representing the country abroad. The 2023 election, the third under direct election, was effectively a contest over Czechia's geopolitical orientation, held against the backdrop of Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine and an energy and cost-of-living crisis.
Pavel ran as an independent, backed by the governing centre-right parties, presenting his military and NATO experience as a guarantee of stability and Western alignment. Babiš, leader of the opposition ANO movement, sought to turn the contest into a referendum on the government's austerity and on the war, at times suggesting Czechia should be cautious about military commitments. A third contender, the economist Danuše Nerudová, drew strong support before narrowly missing the run-off. The campaign was unusually bitter, with disputes over Babiš's record and over wartime security.
The first round was a near dead-heat at the top: Pavel took 35.40% to Babiš's 34.99%, with Nerudová third on 22.43% and Pavel Fischer fourth on 5.48%. With Nerudová, Fischer and most other candidates backing Pavel, he won the run-off comfortably, 58.33% to 41.67%, on a turnout of around 70% — the highest in any Czech presidential election. Pavel carried 11 of the 14 regions; Babiš won only the industrial north-western regions of Ústí nad Labem and Karlovy Vary and the Moravian-Silesian region.
Sworn in in March 2023, Pavel signalled a clear break from his predecessor's pro-Moscow leanings, strongly backing Ukraine and emphasising Czechia's place in NATO and the EU. His calm, consensual style and high approval ratings contrasted with the polarisation of the Zeman years, and he became an influential voice in the European debate on support for Ukraine — even as domestic politics remained sharply divided ahead of the 2025 legislative election.
This was only the third Czech presidential election decided at the ballot box rather than by parliament, and each has told a different story: in 2013 Miloš Zeman narrowly beat Karel Schwarzenberg; in 2018 Zeman held off Jiří Drahoš by under three points; in 2023 Pavel's seventeen-point win was by far the most decisive. The sequence also shows participation climbing as the direct vote bedded in — the 2023 run-off drew the highest second-round turnout of the direct era, with more than seven in ten eligible voters taking part.
The run-off campaign was unusually stark. Babiš sought to reframe a contest he was losing into a referendum on war and peace, plastering the country with billboards declaring that he, unlike 'the general', would not drag Czechia into war — a message aimed at anxious voters a year into Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Pavel countered with deliberate calm, presenting order, experience and unambiguous Western alignment. The framing failed: Pavel carried the run-off across the country, and the attack is widely judged to have driven turnout up against its author. Threats against candidates and a wave of disinformation made it one of the tensest campaigns of the direct era.
Beyond the personalities, the result was read as a second national defeat in sixteen months for Babiš's ANO movement, following its loss of government in 2021 — and as evidence that a clear majority coalition of urban, educated and younger voters could be assembled against him in a two-way race. That lesson hung over Czech politics for the remainder of the parliamentary term.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.