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Zeman leads polls ahead of Czech presidential elections
By EUobserver
Polls ahead of the weekend's first round in Czech presidential elections project Milos Zeman, a former Social Democrat party chairman, to win a second term (47.6 percent) with his most serious challenger, Jiri Drahos, former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences, scoring 44.9 percent. Zeman has shifted over time from enthusiastic European federalist to become an outspoken backer of Russia, and proposing a referendum on Czech EU membership.