On Saturday the Senate was counted. Andrej Babiš, prime minister, billionaire, ANO, took none of the 27 seats on the ballot. DW: 22 seats went to candidates tied directly to the pro-Western opposition, in a chamber of 81. The first electoral test since he won the lower house back in October 2025, after four years out of government. The governing coalition left the Senate empty-handed.

ČTK: the Mayors (STAN) won ten of their 14 candidates. ODS took seven, five of them defences. ANO had 13 finalists. Zero wins. The movement’s own senator count falls by one, to 11; the club, 14. DW speaks of 14 ANO lawmakers. The figures do not clash if the club includes allies. The seats of their own do. The Pirates leave the Senate: Adéla Šípová lost to Petr Paták (ODS).

Babiš came to the conference in a grey T-shirt, “Sorry jako!”, with Aneta Zicklerová. iDNES quoted him: the result is catastrophic, in the locals and in the Senate. They had not expected zero. A restart follows. Who worked, who did not. Who privatised the movement in the regions. Others did everything to go around them. He refused to blame governing strategy, the SPD, the Motorists. He put it on the regional organisations. The leadership will assess. His mandate, he said, is strong enough to send a message down.

The agenda stays. An unpopular plan to recast funding for the public broadcasters. Babiš named, as a reason for the failure, that the government had not cut the licence fee fast enough. The Eurosceptic coalition has stopped direct military support for Ukraine and opposed EU climate policies. The lower house does the day-to-day law. The Senate has a heavy say on constitutional amendments and Constitutional Court judges. That is the stake. It is not a vote to topple the cabinet.

The opposition keeps the upper house. Babiš keeps the government. Between them, a majority the prime minister did not break and a T-shirt that asks pardon without ceding the programme. The catastrophe, in his mouth, is the party’s. Not the government’s. Anyone who mixes them turns a Senate into a dismissal.

Until the November oath, ČTK writes, the chamber stays with 54 full senators. Then the new ones come in. Until then the opposition counts 22 of 27. ANO counts zero of 13. The difference is the Senate. It is not the Chamber.

Image: Michael Brezocnik, Prague Castle at night, 25 July 2013, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is of Hradčany, the presidential seat, not the Senate.

Sources consulted: Populist Czech PM Babis goes empty-handed in Senate elections — Deutsche Welle; Mayors won the Senate election, ANO took not a single seat — České noviny / ČTK.