After years of intense debate, postal voting was introduced in the Czech Republic, allowing voters to use it for the first time in the parliamentary elections held in autumn 2025. Did the expectations of its supporters—who viewed the reform as a step toward broader electoral accessibility—materialize? And, conversely, were the concerns raised by its critics confirmed? Finally, how did the votes of Czech citizens living abroad influence the overall election results in the Czech Republic? These are the key questions explored in this paper.

Key Takeaways:

• In the 2025 elections, a total of 8,978 voters cast their ballots by post, of which 8,757 votes were valid. This represented only around 30% of all votes cast abroad and only a fraction of the original estimates, which ranged from 100,000 to 300,000 votes.
• Research shows that new voting methods tend to be adopted gradually and usually have only a limited mobilizing effect. Postal voting therefore changed mainly the method of voting for already active voters, rather than bringing tens of thousands of new voters into the electoral process.
• In practice, postal voting primarily helped several hundred Czech citizens living abroad for whom traveling to a polling station at an embassy or consulate was genuinely difficult. The overwhelming majority of postal votes, however, were cast from European countries.

Analysis – Karel Sál

The analysis is in PDF under the link below.